


cutting me open, then healing me fine

by wretcheddyke



Category: Doctor Who (2005)
Genre: Angst with a Happy Ending, Eventual Smut, F/F, Plotty, Unreliable Narrator, discussions about mental health, if you can believe such a thing, including depression/suicidal thoughts, psychologist!13, talk therapy
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-09-01
Updated: 2020-10-18
Packaged: 2021-03-06 18:49:09
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 7
Words: 22,296
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26233702
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/wretcheddyke/pseuds/wretcheddyke
Summary: in an alternate timeline where Yaz never met the Doctor, forces reintroduce her to Ryan Sinclair under dire circumstances - can her new psychologist help her heal?
Relationships: Thirteenth Doctor/Yasmin Khan
Comments: 82
Kudos: 118





	1. Session One

**Author's Note:**

> hi! this is gonna be a multi chapter fic I'm hoping to update once a week(-ish). i've never written anything like this before so please let me know your thoughts! 
> 
> title is from invisible string - taylor swift

Yaz’s foot bounces on the shitty, worn out carpet. The stuffiness of the waiting room suffocates her. She wants to run, wants to scream. Wants to cry? No, she doesn’t do that anymore. The empty seats next to her, three in a line, blue and dusty, look ghostly. Who else has sat in this little box of a room, waiting to have their minds picked apart? She picks at her thumb. There’s a bit of dry skin, just next to her cuticle. _Fucking dick heads,_ she thinks.

It’s been two weeks since… well, since that _thing_. Mandated therapy feels like arse covering at this point. _Should’ve done my dishes_ , she thinks. Maybe then Sergeant Sunder wouldn’t have made such a rash decision. She peels the skin down the side of her nail and winces when a streak of red appears in its place.

A green light flashes above the door next to her with a violent buzz. _Guess that’s my cue._ She stands on legs that don’t feel like hers and grabs the door knob with fingers that look unfamiliar.

The room is surprisingly big on the inside. The walls are covered with ceda bookshelves housing strange ornaments and hundreds of books. They look well-worn, ranging from _Advanced Quantum Mechanics_ to _Knitting, For Girls._ Sun beams through the widow behind the desk - it gives the room an amber hue and catches the dust particles in the air. It’s nice. Homey. It doesn’t make sense for a drab business block in Highfield.

“Yaz! Um—Yasmin Khan? Yaz to your friends, right?” The woman behind the desk leaps up with enthusiasm, blonde hair flopping back as she slaps her notebook closed. Yaz spots her knock off docs and a shiny gold ear cuff about her right ear. _Fuck sake, she’s a_ cool _therapist._ “Sorry, I’ve been reading your notes,” she says as she comes out from behind the desk in a hurry. 

“Yeah. Yaz is fine,” Yaz says with a forced smile. 

“Great.” She beams and stands awkwardly, taking Yaz in with a peculiar expression. She nods absentmindedly for a while before leaping back into action. “Oh! I’m the Doctor. I mean, Doctor Jane Smith. Pleasure to meet you.” She goes as if to shake Yaz’s hand but then changes her mind. _This is gonna be a shit show._ “Please, take a seat. Like the top - I love stars.”

“Thanks.” Yaz smiles and looks down at the star on the sweater she forgot she was wearing, not expecting compliments. She follows her emphatic gesture and takes a seat on the garish sofa. “Nice earring,” she adds with a nod to her ear.

“Oh, thanks,” she smiles and scrunches up her face in a way Yaz mournfully notes as cute. There’s a silver key around her neck, tucked into the fabric at her clavicle. Her crisp white shirt is paradoxical to her dusty boots and blue culottes that look like they’ve seen better days. There’s a grey coat with rainbow lining tossed across her desk chair and Yaz wonders how on earth that fits into the overall look. “Never really sure what suits me,” she admits, tugging at the armpit of the fancy shirt. She looks visibly uncomfortable in it like a child wearing their school uniform for the first time.

“I think you look great,” she smiles. “Very bold.”

She looks at the floor as she takes a seat in the armchair just across from Yaz. “My friend said the same thing, actually.”

“She sounds smart.”

“Oh, she is. Very smart,” she says, looking up confidently with a soft smile that seems slightly translucent - grief glittering below the surface. It makes Yaz want to dip her fingers in and extract it like a precious stone from the ocean bed. Inspect the shiny veneer made smooth by years of being submerged below the surface.

_Stop projecting on to your therapist, weirdo,_ some voice that sounds eerily like Sonya chimes in the back of her head.

“So,” she starts, “I’ve been assigned your case - this is all very standard after a traumatic event in the field. You understand this is specifically to do with the Sinclair case but I will be covering a full range of areas?” She leans forward and rests an elbow on her crossed knee, blue fabric riding up her shin.

“What like, my personal life?” She’d seen it coming, really. Yaz isn’t a stranger to therapy. It still doesn’t stop the sense of unease that creeps in when she sees the shape of this monster she’ll have to face outlined before her.

“Exactly. Talk therapy like this doesn’t work if it’s limited to one area of our lives like work,” she reasons, mouth flattening into a sheepish, apologetic line.

Yaz gives a begrudging nod.

“So, I want you to take things as slow as you like. You can leave at anytime. That being said, these are mandated appointments and you will need to complete the full five hours. But the pace is totally up to you,” she says, the familiarity of her Yorkshire accent making Yaz at ease.

“Guessing we can’t do it all in one go? Get it over in an afternoon?” Yaz gives a light chuckle, looking at the blood on her thumb. Something like embarrassment curls in her gut - she’s always hated talking about herself.

“‘’Fraid not. Time between sessions is just as important as what we do in here.”

The gentle tone of her voice both lulls her an infuriates her. _You think I don’t know exactly how this works?_ She wants to spit.

“Plus, trust is built over time. And I really need you to trust me, Yaz.”

When Yaz looks up, big hazel eyes are are set firm on her face, drinking her in. There’s a crease between her eyebrows that make her look perpetually mournful. A thought seeps in before Yaz can stop it: _maybe she’s sad too._ She rolls her eyes at her own childishness, having thought she’d let such desperate fantasies go in her late teens. 

“Ok, first question: tea, coffee, custard cream?” Suddenly her face is set back in a perfect smile, cracks disappeared as if filled in by silicone sealant.

“Tea’d be nice,” Yaz forces a smile. _I’m getting good at that._

Yaz watches her potter about the office, spinning on her heels and pushing her tongue into her top lip as if she were working on a scientific breakthrough rather than making a cup of tea. She looks like an artist or scientist - out of place somehow.

She places a steaming mug—clay painted with muted green and yellow and blue stripes—on the coffee table. Tea bag string wrapped around the handle twice. _I do that,_ Yaz thinks. She takes a tentative sip and frowns.

“Is that Darjeeling?”

“Oh, yeah,” she scrunches her face again. “Is that alright?”

“Yeah I just.. wasn’t expecting it.” Her frown fades as the steam rises up against her face, damp and warm on her skin. It smells like coming home from school and Saturday morning and the early shift with her flask in her lap in her police car.

“Can I just check your name, date of birth and address? For the records.”

“Yasmin Khan. 2nd of October 1998. 34, Park Hill Estate, Sheffield, S2 5AA,” she recites from memory, not even listening to the words and the doctor nods but doesn’t have any notes in her lap.

“And you’ve been with the force since 2016?”

“Yeah. Four years… that’s flown by,” she sighs as she puts her tea down. Has it really been that long? She remembers her probationary period and how excited she’d been. How eager she was to help her community. How quickly that passion had faded when parking disputes and paper work overtook the majority of her time. _Maybe that’s just how everyone feels,_ she thinks. Life slipping through your fingers without you even noticing.

“You look upset?”

Yaz’s eyes snap up from the ugly mug. “No I just… guess I thought I’d be further along by now,” she shrugs.

“In your career?” The doctor seems intrigued, tilting her head to one side.

“Yeah. And life, I guess.”

“You’re still only 21,” she frowns and tucks her dirty boot under her leg on the cream cotton chair.

“Yeah but… I don’t know. I get the feeling I were meant for more, that I’d have done more, by now, at least.”Yaz watches the boot smudge mud into the fabric and lets the words spill out without analysis. _How’s she not stained that chair already?_

“Those are some high expectations y’hold yourself to,” the doctor observes, eyebrows raised slightly. 

“It’s more like… I’ve been drifting.” Yaz frowns again and looks up to the woman’s face. “Guess I didn’t even realise I felt like that ’til you asked.”

The doctor smiles gently. “Well, that’s what I’m here for. Get you asking the right questions.”

“Yeah, s’pose,” she lets out a breath and wipes her palms on her black jeans. _Ten minutes in and we’ve already had a revelation, you’re slacking, Khan._ She used to take pride in her self-awareness but it seems the older she gets the less she knows herself.

“When was the last time you spoke with a psychologist, Yaz?”

She focuses on the sound of her name in this woman’s voice - soft and comforting and oddly familiar. “When I were a teenager. I was in therapy for a while.”

“Right. Yes - I’ve got those files somewhere.”

_Shit._

“How’d y’get those?” Yaz looks round to the pile of papers on the desk the doctor was reading before she came in here. There’s a significant stack she prays aren’t all about her. _That’s embarrassing._

“Requested them from your GP. They wouldn’t usually be available but ‘cause of the nature of these appointments…”

“Right. Screw GDRP,” she says, voice harsh to accompany her head shake. That doesn’t seem right, invading someones privacy like that. Yaz appreciates having ownership over her own narrative - definitely doesn’t appreciate having her younger self blab all her thoughts before she can establish them for herself. She dreads to think what awful one-liners she’d disclosed to her old therapist, convinced they were profound at the time. _Fuck sake._

“Sorry.” The doctor winces a little at her harsh tone, a sheepish smile given as a peace offering. Yaz can’t help but take it - there’s something about the woman that gets to her. It makes Yaz both suspicious and hopeful.

“So,” she clears her throat and shifts the conversation forward. “I’ll start with the obvious. What’s family life like?”

“I live with my parents and my sister, Sonya.” The flat in Park Hill has been her world for so long, she can barely imagine anything else. _How sad is that_ , she thinks.

“Looking to move out?”

“Yeah, eventually.” That’s not the question she was expecting. She thinks about the stream of Rightmove emails she’s let build up in her inbox like the mail stacked up in the hallway after a holiday - only this is two years worth. She’d set up notifications pretty quickly after joining the force. Her plan was to get a one bed, her own proper place to call hers. _What happened?_ “I just… time runs away with you.”

“You can say that again - I’m meant to be good with time but it never stops surprising me,” she smiles eccentrically. “And everything’s ok at home?”

“Yeah just usual stuff. Overbearing parents, annoying little sister,” Yaz says and smiles her first honest smile since she walked in here. It’s at the memory of Sonya applauding her for finally leaving the house today - _‘No way! Not Yasmin Khan with shoes on, someone call the paps, would you?’_ She hadn’t told her where she was going. “Y’know what family’s like.” She looks up to see a pained smile smeared across the doctor’s face and there’s a beat where she thinks she might’ve said something wrong.

“How would you describe your current mental state?” She quickly moves on and Yaz thinks she might’ve imagined the whole thing.

“Bored. I’ve been off duty since…”

“Since the Sinclair incident?”

She hates that’s become the official designation for what happened. _The Sinclair Incident._ It sounds like a shitty murder mystery from the 1940s. _Least that’d have a proper ending,_ she thinks.

“Right. Not allowed ‘round the station and I’ve been advised to stay home as much as possible till they catch him.” The staying home hasn’t been so bad. Yaz really has no desire to see anyone, anyway. Not since her mates had come round for pizza a week after it’d happened and spent the whole three hours theorising about why he’d do it and where he was now. She’d requested a topic change but found she couldn’t bring herself to care about Amita being cheated on again.

“Must be disconcerting, knowing he’s still out there?” It’s the question most people ask these days.

“Yeah but… I don’t know. None of it really seems real.” She thinks maybe she should feel more about the whole thing. About him in particular. Everyone seems to go on and on about what she _must_ be feeling - is it odd she seems to feel nothing about it at all? “I’ve just been at the flat. It’s driving me bananas.”

“Bananas how?” She frowns. _Probably not a great idea to tell your therapist you’re going mad._

“Y’know. Restless… bored.”

“Agitated?” She offers.

“Uneasy, maybe.” She feels suddenly small in the big sofa that surrounds her, her hands sat limply in her lap. The bookshelves tower above her like giants.

“Have you been experiencing any signs of disassociation? Not feeling like your life is yours?”

_Yes._ She stares at the _Beano_ magazine on the coffee table and refuses to look up. _All the time._

“Maybe a bit. Like I said, it doesn’t seem real. Ryan… he were a friend of mine in primary school.” His name sticks in her throat for a second.

“It must be difficult,” she agrees with a patient nod, clearly sensing Yaz’s discomfort. “Anything else?” She steers the conversation back to the present but it hardly eases the strangling grip that’s found purchase around Yaz’s throat.

She sees giant spiders ravishing the city. Spiders or scorpions? It doesn’t matter, she supposes. Dream analysis has never struck her as particularly reliable. “Weird dreams but suppose I’m just sleeping too much.” 

“Nightmares?”

“No, not really.” She recalls the suffocating feeling of being in space without a space suit. A warm body next to her in bed. An endless realm of nothingness that leaves her feeling empty and cold all day. She shudders at the remnants of it, echoing about her brain. “Just… odd.”

The doctor nods again like she’s making a mental note to come back to that later. “How are you recovering physically? Still in any pain?”

“Not really. First two weeks were hell but I’m a quick healer. Vest caught the full impact but my rib still cracked on the right.” She can still feel a sharp stabbing when she takes a deep breath. It was the only thing stopping her crying for a while. _Small wins,_ she thinks. The meds she was taking seemed to make the dreams worse so she stopped sooner than she should’ve. Some part of her brain senses that it’s some convoluted method of self punishment but she refused to unpack that now.

“Ouch,” the doctor winces in empathy. “I’m sorry - terrible with pain, I am.”

“It’s fine now,” she assures her but by the look she gets in response, she’s not sure she was very convincing. 

“And your mental state, historically, how’s that been? I know a little bit about your previous work with Dr. Jenson but I’d like to hear it from you.”

Like a bomb going off only Yaz can feel, her ears buzz and her heart tightens in her chest. _C’mon, you saw this one coming._ She clears her throat. “Just general depression and anxiety. Mostly when I were 15. It got better with therapy,” she minimises it as best she can. She’s already feeling fragile but she knows her stoicism won’t let her tap out completely.

“I’m glad,” she leans back in her chair. Yaz takes the opportunity to sip her now lukewarm tea.

“S’pose, other than that, my life’s been pretty normal.” She meant for that to come out reassuringly but she can’t rid her voice of the downcast tone that gives away her regret.

“Y’sound disappointed about that?” The doctor squints at her suspiciously, grinning slightly. 

“Course,” Yaz feigns a chuckle. “Who wants boring?”

“Can’t disagree with y’there. Always looking for adventure, I am.” She smiles again and Yaz hates how infectious it is. “Boring can be good though, stable.”

“I just…” Yaz looks back up at the huge array of books that tower above her. All those words she’ll never get to read, all those people she’ll never know. It fills her with a sense of hopelessness at the smallness of her life. Her incapacity for greatness that somehow feels thrust upon her. “I get this feelin’ the world is so much bigger than I can see.”

The doctor follows her eye line. “Have you thought about travelling?”

“Oh, all the time.” She grins fully. “I hear stories from my Nani about Pakistan and India and her passage to England. I spend ages imagining what it were like there - I’ve almost perfected it. Dunno why I always think it smelt like yellow marigolds,” she laughs. “I’ve never even left Europe. It’s like it’s calling to me somehow but then… I don’t know. Maybe I’ve missed my chance.”

“Yaz, you’re so young.” The look of confusion on the doctor’s face takes her off guard. _Am I really being that unreasonable?_ “Where does this feeling that life has passed you by come from?”

Yaz frowns. That’s exactly how she feels. Like she’s just woken up here and people have grown and changed she’s stayed exactly the same. A perpetual sense of being left behind in a world that doesn’t belong to her. What if she wakes up in another four years the exact same person she is now? Would anyone even be surprised?

“I dunno. Guess it’s just like I’ve been running on auto pilot for the last few years. I think the last big decision I made was joining the force. And that were back when I was a kid, pretty much.”

“Was it a good decision?” She asks with a tentative nature - open to the possibility Yaz might have regrets she doesn’t want to face.

“Yeah.” She starts confidently. “Yeah, I love my job. Loved my job.” When did that become past tense? Why hadn’t she noticed all of this before? She feels a sudden sense of dread begin to wrap itself around her throat. Panic. _Haven’t felt that in a while_ , she observes calmly. She lets out a sigh. “I guess I just want more. More from the universe.”

“I hope I can give that to you,” she says mournfully. 

Yaz looks up at the woman in front of her. Eyes pained like she’s trying to convey some deeper meaning Yaz can’t see. _You’re doing it again_ , Sonya’s voice rings in her head. Ever the smart arse, never allowing her to engage with a ridiculous fantasy of being saved by the pretty blonde woman.

Still those hazel eyes linger, dripping with a sense of desperation before she swallows and looks away. “Talk therapy is brilliant at realigning us with who we are. With what we want,” she adds a lightness to her tone and it gives Yaz whiplash.

“Right, yeah,” Yaz gives a forced smile and nods her head. “Thanks.”

“Shall we leave it there today? First session’s always a weird one.” She pulls a face and uncrosses her legs. “We’ll get to the good stuff next week, I promise.”

Yaz think she might’ve taken that as a threat in previous times. She notes they’re just about the same height when they both stand and the proximity forces her to take a step back.

“Next Friday, right?”

“Yep. Next Friday.”

When Yaz slides into the drivers seat of her car, she feels the outline of a hole in her chest. Just big enough for someone to stick their finger through and mercilessly prod of the squishy flesh of her heart.


	2. Session Two

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> hi guys thank you for all your comments, it means so much!! I'm really loving hearing your reactions
> 
> ** this chapter has a TW for mentions of bullying, islamophobia and suicidal thoughts so please be careful. **
> 
> (also, if you’re 21+ and want to join a discord server all about thasmin, you can join here: https://discord.gg/kfGfJQ8
> 
> this is a new server and we’re still working out the kinks (pun intended) so please read the rules once you’ve joined and have fun!!)

She’s wearing a maroon t-shirt with a rainbow stripe across the chest this time. It’s not as garish as one might expect from such a description but the yellow suspenders add a certain sense of chaos Yaz can’t help but smile at. She appears more comfortable this time around, her hair no longer straightened death.

Yaz’d slept poorly again. Her dreams infected by contrasting skin tones of rich brown and pale pink. Intertwined as legs braided together under sheets, a mole on the milky expanse of a back, a protruding carotid artery, pulsing at an alarming rate. A ghastly face with no eyes and burnt skin and matted bits that could’ve been hair or dirt or something else entirely. 

She’s tiding up a spillage of biscuit crumbs, having wrestled the packet open too keenly, scattering a few across the coffee table. Her idea of tiding is blowing the crumbs off on to the floor with great, strenuous breaths.

“Sorry, Yaz. Carry on, I promise I’m all ears,” she says, chin close to the wood.

Expectant eyes looking up break her from her thoughts as the doctor sits back in her chair, popping a custard cream into her mouth.

_Shit. Where was I?_

“It started when I were about nine,” she begins. “Taylor Grant called me a terrorist and turned my best friend against me. And then it just… kept happening, right till I left school.” She’s not sure why she’s even talking about this. Why she feels comfortable doing so. She hasn’t told anyone about this is years, hasn’t _thought_ about it in years. The doctor nods and smiles patiently while Yaz talks. “I still get it on the force, obviously, but it’s from strangers mostly.”

“Those are a lot of years of built up trauma. I’m really, really sorry you went through that,” the doctor consoles her. There’s that look again on her face like what Yaz is saying is the most heartbreaking thing she’s ever heard, like it hurts her to hear it.

Yaz has to look away. She squirms under the intensity of her gaze and something resembling guilt turns inside her before she can shake it off. She stands up. _Am I allowed to stand up?_ Too late now - she wanders over to the towering bookcases like she’s facing up to a giant monster in battle.

“It’s easier when it comes from strangers. I can deal with drunk tories,” she laughs a bit but the doctor doesn’t smile back. “But, it were harder when it came from people I trusted, people I liked.”

The look of scorn she’d seen across the faces of her class mates as a child is still vivid in her mind. No amount of therapy or repression could rid her from that image. She’d eaten lunch by herself in Mrs. Pascoe’s art class room for a whole year, just to avoid them. 

“Sounds lonely.” The doctor joins her in front of the bookshelf, gazing over them just like Yaz as if she’s seeing them all for the first time. It’s a poor attempt at mirroring, Yaz can feel stealing glances every few seconds. It’s oddly endearing - like she can’t stop herself. _Subtlety’s clearly not her thing._

“Yeah. Guess so.” She frowns at a dusty copy of _The Poetical Works of Lord Byron_ and wonders how many interests this woman has. “Think loneliness is one of those things that sneaks up on you.”

“How so?” She asks. Giving up on the mirroring and turning to face Yaz, she leans back against the bookshelf, crossing her hands together to stop herself fiddling. She looks honestly intrigued and it makes Yaz’s chest ache - when was the last time she felt seen by someone?

Her blonde hair reminds Yaz of the tresses she’d seen mussed against the pillow in her dream. A warm body tucked up against her front. The soft skin of a belly under her palm. Only then she’d blinked and she was in her bed as normal, that strange whirring noise nothing but the beginnings of her alarm clock.

“Dunno. Just… s’pose I never realised how alone I really was until now.” She’s embarrassed as soon as she’s said it. Alone seems more palatable than lonely.

“You have friends though?”

“Sure.” She’s not really sure she even counts Amita and Leena friends anymore. They only see each other once every few months - less now Yaz isn’t any fun. “Couple from the force,” she lies. _Why am I lying?_ She rolls her eyes at her own petulance. _Fat lot of use therapy’s gonna be if you can’t even tell her this_. She blushes when the doctor seemingly sees right through her, giving a sickeningly understanding smile. Yaz can’t seem to tolerate it today - this awful sense the doctor can read her mind, like she knows more about Yaz than she’s letting on.

She spots an ornament just next to the doctor’s head and plucks it off the shelf without thinking. It’s heavier than she expected - a blue police box about the size of a coffee cup.

“This for my benefit? Make me feel at home?” She chuckles, turning it over in her hand. There’s a little inscription on the front that says _Police Telephone - Free For Public Use._

“Does it?” She asks, a bit more serious than Yaz had expected.

She looks back down at the box. It’s cool and heavy in her hand - strangely familiar in a way she can’t place. Like a childhood memory she can’t recall belongs to her or to a television show. _Home_. That’s exactly how she feels. _Maybe I had one of these as a kid._

“What is it, anyway?” She shakes off the slight sense of unease that threatens to over take her.

“Just an ornament,” the doctor shrugs and smiles. “I’m a big collector of oddities.”

“Sorry.” She puts it back, suddenly wanting rid of the thing, and goes back to scanning the bookshelf.

“No, no. Feel free to look around, I don’t mind.” She leaps up from where she leans to stand by Yaz and explore the shelves with her again, putting her hands on her hips. “Got loads of junk, me - bit of a hoarder, to be honest.”

“Thought you were supposed to be getting people to let stuff go,” Yaz jabs lightly. She’s thrilled at the small chuckle the doctor lets out.

“Nah,” she scrunches her face. “Good friend of mind said ‘only let it go if it doesn’t spark joy’ - best advice ever, that.” She gives a satisfied nod.

“I think that’s from a Netflix show,” Yaz laughs.

“A what?” She frowns, tone lilting in surprise.

“You don’t…? Never mind,” she laughs again. _Where did this woman come from?_ There’s something about her utterly uninterpretable - dressing like she’s from the future but containing a quality uniquely old-fashioned. Yaz shakes her head.

“It’s funny, after what I’ve been through recently—real, proper intense stuff—that I’m stood ‘ere talking about my stupid childhood bullies.” There’s barely even a pinching in her side to remind her of what’d happened anymore. In all her anguish, the events that brought her here feel minuscule. Ryan Sinclair could be a book character for all she cared. She lets her fingers fan through the books. “I guess that sorta stuff changes how you view people.”

“How do you mean?” She asks. The constant requests for further explanation would usually annoy Yaz but she doesn’t mind. She finds herself wanting to talk.

“Dunno. Guess I just have to remind myself not everyone’s that shitty.”

She looks back at her and realises they’ve wandered the length of the office. The doctor’s gaze is still firmly set on her - it’s magnetic, pupils wide and dripping with an expectation Yaz doesn’t know how to fulfil. She feels herself losing time in the hazel irises that look like burning orbs - two suns heating up the skin on her face. She has to pull herself away, eying another ornament.

“What’s that one?”

“It’s a… paper weight.” She looks hesitant as Yaz picks it up, carefully watching how she handles it. It’s long and sliver, smooth with a kind of rock sticking out one end. _Does that say Sheffield steel?_

“It looks like a sex toy,” Yaz observes bluntly.

“Well it’s not!” She exclaims, scooping the paper weight out of Yaz’s hands. Her face is a picture of indignity, an obvious blush dusting her pale cheeks.

“Alright.” Yaz smiles widely and throws her hands up in mock surrender. She’s painfully cute when she’s embarrassed - Yaz has to suppress a laugh along with the glowing warmth that fills her chest.

“The world has its bad apples, Yaz, but humans are amazing,” she says, placing the paperweight back to its position on the shelf. “No doubt still in their infancy,” she reckons, “but undeniably creatures of hope.”

“Thanks. I think.” Yaz can’t help but note what an odd thing that is to say - talking about the world like she exists separately from it. But the woman seems entirely oblivious to her curiousness, giving Yaz another little satisfied nod. “You’re different to my other therapists.”

Her smile drops at that and she looks mildly anxious, looking about like she’s trying to remember doing anything weird. “Different how?”

“I don’t know. Weirder. Nicer.” Yaz doesn’t usually pay compliments—she’s from Yorkshire after all—but this doesn’t feel like a compliment. It feels like a genuine observation. A fact.

“Oh, well. I always say, never fail to be kind,” she says airily, clearly caught off guard by Yaz’s comment.

It’s fridge magnet philosophy, such a simplistic, childishly optimistic way of approaching life - it makes Yaz want to laugh or perhaps cry. She looks at the mole on her cheek. She wonders what this face has seen. She wants to ask, in a much more inconspicuous way, how someone like her comes to be in a world this narrow. _Why am I so drawn to you?_ She realises she’s been staring when the doctor suddenly reanimates—

“Umm, so you saw Dr. Jenson from age 15 to 17, right?”

That wretched feeling in her gut returns, twisting about her intestines like a parasite she’s never been able to kill.

“Yeah. I… ran away when I were 15. My little sister Sonya had to call the police, report me missing. She thought…” The words fade to nothingness - too dark a thing to vocalise. Not without her voice cracking, at least. She’ll never be able to shake the guilt the look on her little sister’s face brought about that day.

“Thought what?”

“She thought I were gonna hurt myself.” That feels like an easier trade off. It’s what people say, isn’t it? Just hurt - curse any thought that goes beyond that.

“Were you?” She asks tentatively, her voice suddenly feeble. Yaz refuses to look at her again, lest she break apart at the seams from the anguished look she knows resides in her eyes.

“Dunno. I were so young. Seems stupid now, when I look back. How much it felt like drowning when it were something so small.” She feels sick with the thought a child could feel so utterly despaired. _I was a child_. Odd, to feel such empathy for yourself.

“It’s not stupid,” she insists and then, to Yaz’s surprise: “You’re never stupid.”

_Don’t look up. Don’t look up. Don’t look up._

She holds on to the mantra, not allowing herself to bask in the doctor’s pain and confuse it for validation. She focuses her vision on the letter T inscribed on the spine of a random book.

“I like to think I wouldn’t have… have gone through with anything. But it still scares me that I could’ve.” She leaves off the ‘that one day I still could’ that echos around her head.

“I’m very glad y’didn’t.” 

Yaz’s can’t stop her eyes snapping up at that and she feels the beginnings of the tears that have started to drown her eyeballs. The doctor’s face is shrouded in a unique blend of grief and relief - it doesn’t feel like empathy. It feels like a fresh, gaping wound bleeding hot sticky blood onto the cheap office carpet.

“Can’t have a universe with no Yaz,” she adds firmly with a smile that doesn’t reach her eyes. Yaz swallows the mammoth lump that resides in her throat and wipes away the betraying tear that slips from her eye. She looks at her for a very long time, desperately trying to understand the message behind her eyes. It’s fruitless - more than likely imaginary.

“Anyway, Anita found me up the moors. Made me a bet things’ll be better in three years.” Three years passed a while ago but she’s still not been back to see the older police officer. She couldn’t say why - maybe there’re are too many things that feel left unresolved, maybe she just never got around to it.

“And are they?”

Yaz takes a long pause. She’s supposed to be honest, with herself and the doctor - that’s the whole point, isn’t it? Is she really better?

“I like to think so. I can still feel it. That bit of darkness, rollin’ around in my chest—suppose it’s more of an emptiness than a physical thing—sometimes it’s worse than others.” _Like now_ , she thinks. The hole in her chest breathes like a twig puncture in a tire. It leaks something poisonous into Yaz’s bloodstream. “But it’s never as bad as it was back then.”

The Doctor doesn’t say anything, just looks at Yaz with an unbelievably deflated expression. She looks utterly forlorn. The muscles in Yaz’s arm twitch like they want to reach out and cup her face and caress her cheek with gentle strokes of her thumb.

It gets too much and she takes a step back the direction they came just so she has something to do. She spots a little framed photograph next to a copy of _Nicola Tesla’s The True Wireless._

“Is that you?” Yaz picks up the frame, cheap wood painted white, probably from IKEA. She smiles at the grainy photo of the doctor in a black tux, familiar ear cuff on display and a wonky bowtie around her neck. “You scrub up nice,” she says with an encouraged laugh.

“Oh, yeah. Party last year… my first time dressing up proper,” she recalls fondly.

“What, ever?” Yaz asks with a frown. By the discomfort she’d expressed in a simple dress shirt, it honestly wouldn’t surprise Yaz.

“Oh—no. I mean, like for a proper fancy thing,” she corrects herself. 

“I like the bowtie.” She wonders who the shoulder next to her belongs to, face cut off by the photo frame.

“Pretty cool, aye?” She beams and it makes Yaz forget she was ever upset.

“Cool’s not my first pick,” she laughs, putting the frame back beside the doctor’s arm. “Dashing, maybe.”

The doctor seems to blush again, licking her lip nervously. It’s easy with her. Unbelievably easy like Yaz can say anything without judgement. She looks like the woman from her dream and Yaz wants to kiss her. She feels like she already has. Like it would be the most natural thing in the world. It would be like coming home from work and slipping off her shoes and putting her keys in the bowl and kissing the doctor. Routine. Easy. _Am I going insane?_

“I think, back then, I just wanted everything to stop. Just press pause so I could rest for a bit,” she starts up again. Using the talk as a distraction from the doctor just as much as she distracts herself from the talk with this enigmatic woman.

“I used to watch this show as a kid about this boy with a magic pocket watch. He could stop time whenever he wanted so he were never late, could run away from his bullies,” she laughs. She can still see the grainy title sequence on their bulky TV from the 90s. “Must’ve been the only fifteen year old still fantasising about time machines.”

The doctor takes a harrowed gasp, quickly swallowing it and standing from her found perch against the shelf. “Never stop fantasising. It’s what life’s made of,” she says urgently like it’s the key to the universe.

“Aren’t you supposed to be grounding me in reality?” She smiles but she can still feel herself frowning.

“I am,” the doctor say. It’s lethally serious and the intensity makes Yaz uncomfortable. She searches those bright eyes for answers but only unearths more questions - it feels like the doctor’s playing a prank on her she hasn’t yet figured out.

There’re hot tears on both her cheeks but she doesn’t know why. “I’m sorry. I’m not usually like this,” she says, wiping away the moisture. Her voice sounds faint in her own ears like even that doesn’t belong to her anymore. The only thing that seems solid, that seems stable and secure is the doctor. Flesh and bone right before her - undeniable.

“I know, it’s okay. Nothing can get you in here, Yaz.” Another odd thing to say, piling on to the confusion. Yaz swims in it—no, drowns. It’s all about her, a thick inky substance shrouding her senses. There’s a hand on her shoulder, bringing her back to the room in some way. She’s close. Yaz can see the rise and fall of her chest and the patch of skin below her eyes that looks more delicate than the rest of her face.

“You’re safe,” she says gently, her thumb pressing into Yaz’s bicep.

Yaz surges forward, her lips pressing against the doctor’s. She feels her bump back against the bookshelf as Yaz’s body presses into hers. Her cotton shirt feels like her bedsheets or something else equally familiar.

The lips against hers feel like final a resolution. Like baseless faith paying off with absolute confirmation. Kissing her feels like, for the first time since childhood, coming home.

It seems to last forever. Her nose is pressed up against her cheek and her bottom lip quivers into the kiss as she cries. She can’t stop herself - Seneca himself would weep at the avalanche of emotion that overcomes her now. She pulls her closer by her shirt and opens her mouth and there’s a fraction of a second where her tongue presses against another before the hand on her shoulder is pushing her away.

“I’m—I’m really sorry Yaz, that’s—“ Her eyes are wider than a frightened rabbit’s in the beams of deadly headlights. Her lips kiss stained and her cheeks red with embarrassment.

“Oh god—No, I’m sorry. That were really weird, I’m sorry.” Yaz feels the building blocks of her life start to crumble around her. _I really am going insane_. Her throat feels like it’s closing up from top to bottom as she takes several steps backward.

“It’s okay,” the doctor assures her, attempting to reach out again in comfort.

“That’s really embarrassing. It were just… The talking and then the photo,” she says, trying to convince herself just as much as the doctor.

“Yaz, please don’t be embarrassed.” She reaches out. Holds her hand. Yaz suddenly realises how crystal clear the room has become. How desperately she wants to escape it. She looks at her own hand in the doctor’s, her fingers hanging between hers like hooks in a dead fish.

“Do you have to report me or something?” She asks, suddenly nervous this might be the last time she’ll ever see her.

“No. It’s—It’s normal to feel some kind of connection when opening up like that. You don’t have to worry.” Her voice is still fraught with panic - clearly unable to comprehend what just happened just as much as Yaz.

Yaz lets out a shaky breath. “Okay. I’m sorry,” she says again. “I should probably leave.”

The doctor frowns a bit and searches for the right words before landing on: “You don’t have to.”

“I think I want to.” Yaz can’t think of anything worse than sitting across from the woman she just threw herself at to discuss her feelings. She needs to leave, she needs to get out and run until she feels the wide expanse of undiscovered land around her and she can finally stop pretending she knows who she is. She wants to sink into the comforting depths of anonymity, into the wild west of selflessness.

“That’s totally fine,” the doctor nods and lets go of her hand. The loss is felt instantly, a cord snapping with a painful fizz.

“Ok,” Yaz nods. She looks about the room and picks her her leather jacket off the sofa arm before turning to the door. “Bye,” she says quickly, leaving the woman stranded in the middle of the carpet looking small and defeated.

“Bye, Yaz.” She hears over her shoulder but the last syllable is lost to the slamming of the office door.

_Fuck._

_Fuck._

_Fuck._


	3. Session Three

Anger fizzles in Yaz’s chest, sparking and popping like some complex machine overrun with rage. She hasn’t spoke since she entered the room bar a curt one word greeting, laced with poison. The sound of laughter bouncing around her sleep filled mind still echos, a low condescending chuckle. And then _her_ face, hovering somewhere between Yaz’s thighs. The doctor had grinned, lips wet, white teeth bared in a snarl. Yaz had woken scared and wet and embarrassed and exhausted.

“Y’seem agitated today, Yaz. Anything happened to upset you?” She looks confused as if she doesn’t know exactly what she’s doing to Yaz.

The rage burns through her limbs, encouraging her to lash out in a cathartic burst of insults and accusations. _Who the fuck are you, really?_ She wants to snap. _Why are you doing this to me?_ She fiddles with the zipper on her jacket, it’s started to fray and she picks at the loose thread until it starts to unravel into something ugly and misshapen. 

“Nope. Just tired,” she says without looking up.

“How are you sleeping?”

She asks the question like she already knows the answer. She _always_ already knows the answer. It’s starting to set off big red alarm bells in Yaz’s psyche - a klaxon blare signifying some awful danger she can’t yet make out.

She looks up to see the splinters of her dream sparkle and vanish before her. She’d thought, quite confidently, the doctor had worn a nasal breathing strip to bed, blue against her pale skin. But then she saw Ryan Sinclair stood in her lounge and he was wearing one too so that couldn’t be right. He had a gun in his arms, a big one this time and it looked like it belonged in a sci-fi film. Then he had disappeared too and she was back in some endless place, filled only with towering tree trunks with no branches.

“Fine. Just had a few too many last night.”

The doctor’s in a navy jumper. It makes her look gentle and harmless like she might wrap Yaz up in a hug and let her sink into her warmth. A complete facade, Yaz is sure. She puts it down to smoke and mirrors, just one face to hide the darker one that must reside beneath. How can someone so enthralling be harmless?

The doctor looks confused for a moment, eyebrows pulling together. “But you don’t drink?”

“What?” Yaz frowns, suddenly brought into the conversation by the odd claim.

“I mean, I thought you didn’t,” she backtracks. “It’s haram, right?”

Yaz lets out a scoff. “Are you seriously calling me a bad Muslim?” The words are hot in her mouth, as if she couldn’t get any angrier. _Where the fuck does she get off?_

“No—No. Um, I’m sorry,” she stutters, wincing in a painful display of regret and apology. “I just… I s’pose I made an assumption. I’m really sorry, I—“

“It’s fine.” Yaz cuts her off. _I really don’t have time for this_. “I don’t usually.”

“You’ve started recently?” She asks tentatively and Yaz rolls her eyes - she knows where this is going.

“It’s not a big deal.” Really, it’s not. She’d let Sonya drag her to the pub and then out to the only decent club in Sheffield. The booming vibrations of the music had rattled through her chest and made her feel alive despite the twinges in her healing rib. That is until the pulsing beat began to disturb the dust she’d let settle there, causing a sandstorm of feelings to burst out and choke her. She’d tried and failed to drown the storm in more and more cocktails. A girl in the smoking area had kissed her against the wall before realising how drunk she was and calling her a taxi. It was all tongue and no passion and it left Yaz feeling like a dead planet - barren and cold.

“Yaz, if your using alcohol as—“

“I said it’s not a big deal. I went out, had a few drinks, met some girl, was home by 3,” she cuts her off again, getting used to the feeling of experimenting with her anger. It feels good to show it, to not swallow it and let it plant seed in her stomach. She’s not even sure why she mentions the girl - ‘met’ is a strong word, she didn’t even get her name.

The doctor looks upset for a moment, reserve slipping for a brief moment before she can contain herself. “You met a girl?” Slips out before she can pull down her mask. She looks down at her knee and readjusts her position in her chair, composing herself before looking back up with a face donned with nothing but professional intrigue.

“Jealous?” Yaz pointedly asks with a cruel smirk. She knows it’ll likely backfire—she was the one to kiss the doctor after all—but the temptation to get under the woman’s skin is too great. She wants to rattle her just as much as Yaz is by her.

A flash of something like real pain crossed the doctor’s face. _Is she really jealous?_ Her cheeks flush slightly and Yaz gives herself a little pat on the back for making her uncomfortable.

“Um—I’m your therapist, Yaz. That would be inappropriate,” she mumbles, not managing to look Yaz in the eye.

“Didn’t stop you last week, did it?” Yaz scoffs. She’d spent the last seven days replaying the kiss over and over in her head. She’s convinced the doctor kissed her back, even just for the briefest of moments. _She wanted me, too._ At first it had given her a thrill. A sense of satisfaction the feeling was mutual. Now it sits as a ball in her gut, heavy and spun with the webs of manipulation. _Is this her move? Does she do this to everyone?_

“I…” The doctor frowns and shakes her head, jaw swinging wordlessly.

“That why you ran away from your old life?” Yaz takes a shot in the dark, leaning forwards in her seat to gauge the doctor’s reaction.

“What?” She asks abruptly, scrunching her face in confusion. Yaz tries to find it less cute this time.

“Get involved with a patient even though you knew it’d end badly? ‘Till it all came crashing down on y’head?” She narrows her eyes, studying her face to see if she’s hit the nail on the head. “Or was it a student?” Something like surprise cross her expression. _Bingo_.

“I’m—I’m sorry, Yaz,” she insists, crossing her legs so her feet point away from Yaz, guarding herself from the oncoming interrogation. “I don’t know what you mean.”

“C’mon, Jane Smith? What kind of place holder name is that? One up from Jane Doe, if you ask me.” She grins, revelling in the way the doctor frowns and shakes her head at the presented evidence. The only information online she could find about Dr. Jane Smith was a bio on on three-week old Linkedin page that claimed she’d moved to Sheffield in 2018. Her previous jobs included an undisclosed amount of time teaching at St. Lukes University in Bristol and joke entry about being an advisor for Winston Churchill.

“Do you always struggle this much when trusting new people?”

“Only when they’re untrustworthy,” Yaz shoots back without missing a beat.

There’s a glint of humour around the doctor’s eyes like suddenly she’s enjoying this. Like this is what she’d intended all along - another example of her being one step ahead of the curve. It only serves to fuel Yaz’s anger.

“I find it odd you’d be hostile to someone you believe could potentially be in witness protection. You being a police officer,” she observes, suddenly unruffled by Yaz’s keen interest on her. _She’s testing me._

Yaz smiles at the obvious red herring. “I know PPS.”

Yaz had worked closely with a Protected Persons Service officer on her probationary period. The one thing she’d taken away from them—the nature of their work being so secretive even to other officers—was how airtight their work had to be.

“They don’t always get it right but they’d do a far better job than you did, that’s for sure.”

The doctor’s eyes narrow slightly, the slight edges of amusement turning into a small smile. “You looked me up?”

“Course I did.”

“And what did you find?” The doctor asks, leaning forward on her chair just like Yaz, mirroring her posture. She looks like a hopeful parent waiting for a child to complete a maths equation they’ve been studying for - eyes wide and full of expectation.

“I found a big empty hole where a person should be,” Yaz says, not letting the intensity of her gaze shake her like last time. “It’s like they invented you last week.”

Something in her face relaxes and Yaz feels slightly disappointed like she said the wrong thing. Like she expected more.

“Is this why you’re feeling angry today, Yaz?” She asks, trying to steer the conversation back to Yaz.

Yaz doesn’t allow her to. “Why move to Sheffield? Bit of a trek from Bristol.”

“This isn’t about me, Yaz—”

“You wanna ask me personal questions it’s only fair,” she reasons. “Question for question, you get to know me and I get to know you.” It seems like a decent proposition, a trade off of personal tidbits. Yaz is no longer in the mood for one-sidedness, not when the doctor seemingly holds all the cards.

The doctor pauses, thinking over the offer before she shakes her head. She almost seems annoyed. “I already know you, Yaz,” she says, slightly defeated. “This is about you getting to know yourself, so you can see things clearly. Give you the tools you need to be able to move forward.”

“And you’re the one to help me do that?” Yaz’s eyes narrow at the sudden loss of interest in this game. _What kind of tactic is this?_ She thinks.

“I’m nobody, Yaz. I could be replaced next week, it’s not important. Would you prefer a different therapist?”

The simmering rage starts to boil once more. She can feel it coming out hot from her nostrils and her breathing picks up. It’s a cheap trick, threatening to call the whole thing off. A ripcord, the tactical equivalent of going all-in.

But something tells Yaz the woman has just as much invested in keeping this thing going as she does. So she calls her bluff, doesn’t back down and holds those burning hazel eyes strong even as they start to scorch her.

The doctor breaks. She looks to the side and gives a defeated sigh. “I’m a traveller,” she starts. “That’s why there’s not much record of me on the internet. I bounce around a lot, no set home, that sort of thing.”

Like a string being cut Yaz relaxes with her win. She turns the new piece of information over in her mind and feeling out the edges to make sure it fits. “What like a Doctors-beyond-borders type of thing?”

“Sure. I help people where I can,” she agrees.

“So why Sheffield?” Her accent is obviously northern. It’d make sense for her to be from the area - but why leave? And why come back?

“Met a good group. Thought I’d stick around for a while,” she shrugs like it’s the most obvious thing in the world. 

“You still with them?”

She looks away from Yaz, mulling the question over before settling on, “sort of.” Looking off into the middle distance, she smiles fondly like she remembering these people Yaz will never know. She looks sad. Grief stricken, even, but still full of adoration.

Yaz refuses to let it stretch at the hole she finds growing in her chest, bigger and bigger each day. “Well that’s a non-answer,” she regards her coldly.

The doctor chuckles a bit and it brings her out of her memories. “Question for question,” she shrugs again.

“Go on then.”

“Were you bullied for your sexuality when you were young?” She asks without missing a beat and it gives Yaz whiplash. _How long has she been waiting to ask that?_

“No,” she blurts and hears her own indignity. The doctor raises her eyebrow in a way to say she won’t get another question if she doesn’t go into more detail. “I didn’t really know I liked girls till I were older.” The doctor nods patiently again, as if they’re back to normal so Yaz throws another curveball. “If y’so interested in my sex life.”

She frowns and blushes a bit before recovering. “Um, it’s normal to repress things we’re frightened of.”

“I weren’t frightened I just… never really thought about it until…”

Until when? Her own past seems so fuzzy these days. She can’t even remember the first girl she kissed. That should be important, shouldn’t it? That should be magical and life altering and _memorable_. But who had it been? She’d been at a museum, or maybe an aquarium, somewhere with warm glowing lights. She was on a flight of steps, her hand gripping tight to a cold metal bar when she’d first felt the sensation of lips on hers. But she couldn’t say who they’d belonged to.

“Until what?” The doctor presses.

“I don’t know. Until I were older.” She brushes it off like she always does. It hurts to press at these things, like an ice pick at her eyeball. “It’s not a bad thing to only appreciate sex when you’re an adult,” she snaps.

“I sorry, I didn’t mean to imply otherwise,” she says earnestly. “We can move on, I—”

“You get uncomfortable when I talk about sex,” Yaz observes, eyes narrowing at the doctor’s shifting.

“That’s—That’s not true. We can talk about… that. If you’d like,” she says and she’s really blushing this time, faking an air of confidence as she looks up at Yaz past scorching cheeks.

“Talk about what?” Yaz smirks, eyebrows lifting expectantly as she waits for the doctor to say it.

Her cheeks blow out slightly as the word takes its shape in her mouth and then she lets out a muttered and hesitant, “…Sex.”

Yaz knows her point’s been made when she laughs and the doctor winces. _What kinda therapist blushes like that?_ She gets up from her spot on the sofa, choosing to look at the books again. It’s more of a tactic this time - a gesture to suggest she’s examining the doctor’s life right in front of her. Picking her apart to find the secrets she’s positive reside beneath the shiny veneer. Although she doubts there’s anything on display the doctor wouldn’t want her seeing.

“How long have you been a therapist for?” She asks. The insinuation she’s bad at her job rests heavy in the air when she shoots her an amused look.

“Became a doctor a very long time ago. Switched to psychology more recently,” she says. Yaz gets the feeling she’s trying very hard not to mince words.

“Why the switch?”

“Friend of mine got hurt. I wanted to be able to help her,” she says. Yaz looks over to check she’s not lying - it’s an odd reason to switch careers. _Makes sense she’d attract loonies for mates._ “What made you wanna become a police officer?”

“I wanted to help people.” Yaz’s answer rolls of her tongue as easily as her name and address had as she eyes a copy of _Amelia Earhart’s Last Flight._

“Pfft. That sounds like a pretty generic answer,” the doctor scoffs, clearly trying to engage Yaz a bit more as she digs at her reasoning.

“You calling me a liar?” Yaz asks, spinning around to look at the woman perched on the armchair, dirty boots scuffing the fabric again. “Don’t think therapists are supposed to do that.”

“No. I just think there’s more to the story. Something less noble, maybe,” she hints and Yaz gets the impression she’s back to enjoying herself, an eyebrow raising curiously.

“Power hungry cop? Y’gonna diagnose daddy issue too? Can I see your medical license?” Yaz shoots at her in quick succession, not allowing a gap for a response.

“Sorry?” The doctor looks caught off guard by her request. Whether she’s concerned Yaz is on to her makeshift persona or that she’s completely at the mercy of wild conspiracy theories, Yaz can’t tell. _Please don’t say I’ve turned into my dad_ , she prays.

“Your license?” She asks again, steeling her wavering confidence.

“Oh, yeah. Of course.” The doctor leaps up from her chair, far too enthusiastic for the amount of tension that envelops the office. Rifling through the pocket of the grey coat tossed across the back of the chair, she pulls out a small wallet. “BPS accredited,” she assures, holding up the small ID card.

“You were qualified in Huddersfield?” Yaz reads the small lettering on the ID. A University of Huddersfield emblem in the top right opposite the British Psychological Society one on the left. Sure enough her photo is there, next to her name. _Dr. Jane Smith, Psychologist. ID number: 071018_. Yaz didn’t even know medical IDs that that existed but it seems legitimate enough.

“Um—Yeah. Explains my accent, right?” She smiles and looks at the ID herself with a frown before tucking it back into her pocket.

“Are you asking or telling me?” Yaz frowns at the question and the doctor frowns at hers before shaking her head and sitting back down. It gives Yaz another little accomplished kick and she can feel the smug smile on her face.

“I were thinking more along the lines of thrill seeking behaviours,” she says when she’s settled, getting back to her train of thought.

Yaz’s smug smile falters. That’s oddly accurate and she curses herself for being so transparent.

“I read your notes with Dr. Jenson. Can you think of recent instances of seeking out danger?”

The reason she’s here looms over them both like a sea monster rearing its head from the ocean, dripping and destructive and angry. They circle around it, neither of them making the acknowledgement.

“No,” she insists. “That was when I were a kid. It’s not like that anymore.” She’s trying to convince herself just as much as the doctor. She's not still so self destructive, is she? That can’t be why she’s here. _It’s not like I asked to be bloody shot at._

“No?” The doctor tilts her head like she was expecting another answer - either one more honest or one Yaz can’t recall.

“No,” she buckles down. “I like my life, wouldn’t change it for anything,” she spits.

The doctor frowns in surprise like her maths isn’t adding up properly. Of course, it isn’t. Her equations are accurate, it’s Yaz’s input skewing the results. But she can’t stop herself lying, not when she doesn’t trust the woman in front of her.

“Sorry, that not working for you?” She snaps at the doctor’s expression. “Want me to cry on your ugly sofa?” She gestures to the garish purple couch and the Yaz-sized imprint she’s left there.

“I want you to feel like you can, if you need to,” the doctor responds and it’s so unnecessarily tender it makes Yaz’s blood boil.

“Do you just get off on watching people bare their souls to you? Is this trauma porn to you?” The way she stands above the doctor gives a strange sense of power that she latches onto eagerly, digging her wandering fingertips into the solidness of it like a free climber scaling Stanage Edge. Finally, a grip hold.

“No, Yaz. This isn’t about me,” she says and her face softens the more disturbed Yaz becomes. 

“Yeah, you keep saying that.”

“It’s the truth. I’d never lie to you, Yaz.” The earnest promise catches Yaz off guard. She sounds more like a friend than a therapist and it’s confusing. “It must be difficult not to be able to turn off your detective brain. I’m a bit the same, y’know,” she claims, voice casual as she tucks a boot under her thigh. “Do you get a lot of intrusive thoughts?”

The repeating images from her dreams that are gradually slipping into her waking life flash across her eyelids. The glistening blue eyes of a man who looked like oversized lego she’d sworn was in her kitchen yesterday sends a chill through her. _How can she read me so easily?_

Anger flashes through her once more, the final spark of fight fizzing and popping through her legs.

“You always wear that key,” she says, eying the silver chain around the doctor’s neck. “What’s it unlock?”

It looks like any old yale key, round head punctured where the silver chain slides through, tethering it around her neck. Yaz, quite boldly and to her own surprise, plucks the small piece of metal up between her fingers until the chain is taught. She holds back a gasp when she feels hold cold it is - impossibly cold as if it had been left out in the snow.

“My home,” the doctor says, her voice level. She looks up to Yaz’s face under her lashes and Yaz realises how close she’s gotten. Her heart beats in her chest, quick as a fleeing hare’s.

“That’s weird.”

“I’m weird.” She shrugs defiantly.

“Where do you live?” Yaz edges closer, dropping the key but perching herself on the arm of the sofa right in front of the doctor. She towers over her, leaning into her personal space - a tactic she’d been warned not to use during interrogations lest she intimidate a false confession out of someone.

The doctor appears flustered by the proximity, going slightly ridged in comparison to her usual fidgety state of being. “I don’t give out my address to patients, Yaz.”

“You live at 36 Shrewsbury Road. Don’t you? I live five minutes down road from there but you already knew that. Is it just a coincidence you’re right on my doorstep? Right on Ryan Sinclair’s road, too? Cause something tells me that it isn’t.”

She’s silent. Staring at Yaz in some indescribable way, eyes wide, breathing measured. _Have I cracked her?_ Yaz studies every inch of her face, every flicker of muscle beneath the skin that could indicate a fissure in her resolve.

She doesn’t even care how insane she sounds. _I don’t really think she lives next door ‘cause of me, do I?_ The slight parting of the doctor’s lips, like she might confess or call out for help, sets every atom in Yaz’s body on red alert.

“Am I scaring you?” Yaz asks and her voice is breathy and unfamiliar in her ears. She doesn’t even know what she wants the answer to be - just that she needs to doctor to feel it. 

“No, Yaz,” she says, voice as gentle as a summers breeze. She reaches her palm up and places it against Yaz’s cheek. It feels warm like the sun’s tender caress. “You’re not scaring me,” she says unyieldingly. The truth. She looks sad, really sad. Studying Yaz back just as much but searching instead for the damage she wishes to heal.

Yaz frowns. That giant lump in her throat is back and suddenly all the power she thought she possessed dissipates into the ether. The firm rock beneath her fingers fractures and in a tumble of rubble and dust she falls. She feels small and embarrassed, blinking away the red blotches of anger that had clouded her vision. _What was I thinking?_ She pulls away as reality swims back into focus.

When the doctor’s hand falls from her face, the room seems painfully silent. The only thing that remains are the echos of her outbursts, fruitless and petulant. _I’m so tired_ , she thinks. The embers of her rage slowly dying - and in the ashes, nothing but charred bone and a void that can’t be filled or destroyed.

“I think maybe we should call it a day, yeah?”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> this got hash tag sad, sorry guys i know we all just wanna gove yaz a hug😭 thank you all again so much for the comments, they're so encouraging!!


	4. Session Four

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> hi guys, sorry this is a short one. please keep up the comments im absolutely loving all your responses, it means a lot🧡

The door swings open with a pathetic squeak. Yaz hesitates in the doorway, flicking the case on her phone with a nervous snapping. She doesn’t want to be here, she wants to be at home in bed. She wants to be in a dreamless state without the ghosts that seem to wander the halls.

“Hi,” she offers weakly.

The doctor is sat cross-legged on her chair like a child. There’s a book in her lap but Yaz can’t see the spine.

“Yaz. Hi. Come in,” she smiles sweetly like she’s happy to see her. “How’ve you been? I were worried when you rescheduled.” It makes the ball of guilt in Yaz’s belly twist.

“It were just a mix up with my shifts,” she says as the doctor snaps her book shut. That’s the first lie of the day - there’d been no mix up. Yaz had purposely rearranged this appointment to clash with the start of her shift. She needed a ripcord, an absolute out for when this inevitably went south.

“You’re back at work?” The doctor frowns.

“Desk duty. Nothing crazy.” The smell of coffee and dust in the precinct had brought back a familiar feeling she’d forgotten about. It felt like revisiting Redlands Primary School long after growing up, even though it’d only been a few weeks. There’d been a moment in the loos where she thought there was something in the plumbing about to burst through the porcelain and eat her whole. Something big and hairy and terrifying.

“Good to get out the house?” Her eyebrows raise expectantly and she seems so full of intrigue as Yaz takes her spot of the sofa.

‘Yeah.. Weird, but yeah.” She not quite ready to disclose all that just yet. Last weeks outburst is still fresh in her mind and she feels, in some way, like she owes the doctor progress instead of decline.

The doctor nods patiently. “How are you feeling about… what happened last week?” She asks so tentatively Yaz thinks she might cry. She radiates such an element of consideration, it scorches Yaz every time.

“I—um. I wasn’t myself,” she says and her bottom lip quivers as she looks at her hands. “I’m sorry.”

“Y’don’t have to apologise—”

“I do. Of course I do,” Yaz says. She looks up to see the doctor eyebrows knitted together. The knowledge that she’s the cause stabs her. _Why is this so hard?_ “I were horrible. I still don’t know why.” She’s replayed the session over and over in her mind, trying to make sense of her behaviour - the only thing she can see is the swirling blackness of her confusion, solidifying into to ghastly images and then dissipating back into sludge before she can comprehend them.

“You went through something traumatic,” the doctor reasons. “Being told someone you thought you knew hurt you changes things. You’ve had your whole perception twisted. It makes sense you wouldn’t trust anyone, let alone me.”

Her words makes sense. Some of the fog clears and Yaz thinks she can see the beginning of something crystallising. _How does she always make sense?_

“That’s why I keep talking about my bullies?” She asks and picks at the loose thread on her knee. Being hurt my someone she thought was good isn’t new - goodness has been transformed into a red flag. A signal of oncoming betrayal.

“I think so.”

“And why I lashed out at you.” _Because I like you so much._

“All very logical,” the doctor agrees and Yaz chuckles a bit at her complimenting the logicality her insanity.

“Didn’t know I were that transparent,” she smiles. 

“You’re a lot of things, Yaz. That’s not one of them.” She uncrosses her legs and shuffles forward on her seat as if her next words are vital. Her hands are resting in her lap and Yaz wishes they’d reach out and hold hers. “To see through all the mental barriers you’ve put up, that’s why I’m here. So you can see the truth.”

“And what’s that?” Yaz asks only half jokingly.

“I wish I could just tell you,” she sighs and shakes her head a little. _Why does she always seem so invested in me?_ She looks mildly forlorn around the edges of her endless hopefulness. “I wish I could.”

“Yeah, it would be a lot quicker,” Yaz scoffs and the doctor smiles a bit. 

“Somethings are too painful to hear from someone else. It has to come from you, Yaz. It’s the only way.” She looks at her with a level of intensity Yaz has never seen before, willing her towards some end she can’t yet make out. And then suddenly she’s sitting back in her chair and it’s like it never happened. “How’s being back in uniform?”

“Good,” she starts confidently but the doctor doesn’t say anything else. She thinks about the the way she’d picked up her pace as she wandered through the precinct hall, convinced there was some awful thing following her in the walls. The corridors looked long and winding and all the same as if she was in a hospital or a space ship. She thinks about the coat tails she’d seen flashing around the corner and how _almost there_ she’d felt upon seeing them. She thinks of that faceless face the haunts her, burnt and flesh-like but entirely inhuman. “I’m scared all the time,” she croaks.

“Scared of what?” The doctor asks.

She can’t say it, of course she can’t say it. _I’m scared I’m seeing ghosts. I’m scared there’s something out there trying to get me. Something a lot worse that Ryan Sinclair._

“I dunno,” she shrugs. “Sometimes I think I can’t trust myself. Can’t trust my own thoughts.” How can she when they make such little sense? “Do people know when they’re going insane?”

They’re hot tears on her face and she wipes one away when it lands on her lip. The doctor shifts in her seat, seemingly resisting an urgent need to move closer to Yaz.

“There’s this… big empty hole in my chest,” Yaz starts but her voice cracks before she can finish the sentence.

“You’ve said before that—“

“It’s not like when I were a kid,” she interrupts. She can’t even compare this to how she felt back then, this thing is much bigger. It feels solid, hollow, inhuman. “It’s like I can feel the edges of it. You know, sometimes I have to check my pulse. Just to make sure my heart’s still there.” Her voice feels so quiet as she talks and she squeezes her eyes shut and lets the moisture fall from them like rain. She stands, her legs moving on auto pilot beneath her as she walks up to the books. She finds them oddly comforting.

“This feeling… has this been since the Sinclair incident?”

Has it? The first two weeks had been hell, sure, but at least her dreams had just been dreams. Her biggest gripe the split bone in her side. “Not really,” she says, running her fingers over the black plastic of a stethoscope that resides on one of the shelves.

She can feel the doctor’s frown without even looking. “Before then?” 

“Just since I met you,” she says as she turns. 

“Oh…” She looks taken aback. Embarrassed even. Her eyes search Yaz for something but falter when she meets her gaze. “Therapy can often make things feel worse before they feel better.”

It’s a line she’d heard many a time. Somehow it doesn’t seem to apply here.

“What happens after week-five?” Yaz asks quietly.

The doctor slides off her chair, now entirely smudged with scuff marks and dirt from her boots, to stand next to Yaz. “What d’y’mean?”

“I mean… what if I don’t feel better? You just cut me open and then leave?” She forces a little laugh but she can feel her heart racing with fear at the prospect. The idea of this woman disappearing again. No, not again. _Why did I think that?_

“I’m not gonna just leave you, Yaz.”

A bolt of lightning jolt through her head. _Yes, you are. You have to. All of you. No questions._ Pain shoots through her skull and there’s dusty ground under her boots and smokey grey clouds around her head. _I’ve been so reckless with you. You’re human. If they catch you, they’ll convert you._ The doctor’s face flickers into an expression of anger and grief, hair windswept, and then suddenly she’s back to normal amongst the books. Yaz’s breathes come fast and shallow as she lets the sudden vivd imagery flash through her mind. She feels sick, dizzy, winded.

She sighs as more tears fall and she steps closer. “Why do you feel so familiar to me?” She breathes.

“Oh, Yaz…” The doctor’s expression melds into one of despair, her hand coming forward to wipe at Yaz’s tears. “I’m so sorry,” she says earnestly, cupping Yaz’s face and her sleeve smells like motor oil and home. 

“Stop. Please, stop,” Yaz pleads, shutting her eyes to the familiar face she can’t bare to look at.

“Stop what?” She retracts her hand and it leaves a cold spot on her cheek.

“Apologising. Looking so guilty all the time. Like I’m hurting you.”

The doctor seems to blink away whatever secrets are leaking from her face, surely internally cursing herself for being so transparent. “Sorry—” She starts and then halts herself and Yaz almost laughs. “I mean. I didn’t mean to.”

“Obviously,” Yaz rolls her eyes and finds them puffy and strained. The tears are sticky on her cheeks. “Your poker face is shit.”

“I prefer snap,” she mutters to herself.

Yaz laughs. A bubble of a laugh at her mildly petulant defensiveness and the doctor looks up, embarrassed but happy she’d managed to draw the noise from Yaz. She sniffles and wipes her cheeks of the remnants of her crying. _Enough of that, now_ , she hears Najia’s voice in her head. Plucking the packet of biscuits off the coffee table, Yaz turns and sits on the shitty grey carpet, her back up against the books.

The doctor seems to hover next to her for a moment until Yaz shoots her a curious look and she plonks down on the floor next to her. Yaz has always thought there’s something refreshing about sitting upon a hard floor and seeing the world from a different angle.

“I had a dream last night I were hell,” she says, ripping open the packet of custard creams. _How does she get through a whole pack so quickly?_ “Everything was burning and there was a whole city in ruins. Fire everywhere, it were so hot I could feel in on my cheeks.” She can sense the doctor tense beside her but keeps going. “It felt like I’d been there before.”

“Where d’y’think that came from?” She asks, her voice only slightly strained.

“I were gonna ask you,” Yaz scoffs. She pulls out the first biscuit and pops it in her mouth, dusting the crumbs off her shirt. “Do you believe in ghosts?”

“Sure, don’t rule anything out, me,” she smiles, stealing the packet from Yaz and claiming a biscuit for herself. It’s too easy an answer for Yaz.

“I mean _really_ like… there could be things out there that we haven’t seen? Or haven’t discovered yet?” She asks and searches the doctor’s face for some sign she’s just playing along to placate her. There is none. She seems utterly open to whatever Yaz has to say. “Sometimes it feels like I’m right on the edge of uncovering some massive thing. Or like something really bad is gonna happen. I just can’t remember which.”

“One thing I’ve learned, bouncing around so much, is to travel hopefully. Keepin’ an open mind is all we can do. Y’never know how the universe’ll surprise you.” She smiles and there’re crumbs on her mouth but Yaz doesn’t find it gross.

“You’d tell me if I were going insane, right?” She whispers.

“I promise,” she says, her face softening until her hazel eyes look like melted gold. “You’re doing so well, Yaz.”

“Thanks,” she smiles despite not believing it. The clock on the wall shows half-past three and she curses herself for moving her appointment, wanting nothing more than to sit here with her for an extra thirty minutes. “I should go,” she says regretfully. “Get a shower in before my shift.” 

The doctor gives her a hand up as they stand, her skin soft and lovely on Yaz’s. Her chest feels less like a void today and more like a bloodletting. Cut open as it spills down her arms and on to the floor, a track marking her way back here. A string through a dark cave. She picks up her jacket and phone, her keys jangling in her hand.

“Y’said last week you had a friend who got hurt? How is she?” She asks before turning.

“Better, I think,” the doctor smiles. “I’ve not seen her in a while but I think I will soon.”

Yaz nods. “She’s lucky to have you.”

“Nah,” the doctor shakes her head and scrunches her nose in that way Yaz has come to cherish. “I’m the lucky one,” she says. 


	5. Session Five

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> hey guys! sorry this one is a bit late, it was my birthday this week and ive just moved house lol. this is The Big One so i hope you enjoy it (if that's the right word lmao)
> 
> As always, please leave feedback/comments/kudos! i love hearing from you all, it's so encouraging.🧡

Her tongue sticks out as she wrestles with the tray, poking into her top lip as she focuses on not spilling tea. Her blonde hair falls down around her face and Yaz can see the tendons in her neck and the little ridges over her throat.

“I’d like to ask you about the reason you're here. If you feel ready,” she says, placing two glass mugs of tea down on the coffee table. The smell of Darjeeling has started to meld with this place to make it feel like home. _Isn’t that a mad thing to think about your therapist’s office_ , Yaz thinks. 

“Sure,” Yaz says, her forced-casual air almost convincing. The doctor pulls out a file with some papers in and places it on the table. Yaz tries to assure herself she’s just getting prepared, that this isn’t an interrogation. Still, the anxiety claws at her. It prickles under the backs of her thighs and makes her want to get up and run.

“What was your relationship like with Mr Sinclair before the incident?” She starts, voice gentle as if she were taming a feral kitten.

“Ryan,” Yaz corrects. _Mr Sinclair_ is far too professional for that gangly kid she knew from school. “We were mates when we were young.”

“You went to Redlands primary school together?” Just the name of the place brings back the smell of the school dinners, the feel of rough grey carpet under her tiny palms and the image of the big orange tiger painted on Miss Crosley’s wall.

“Yeah, but I haven’t— Hadn’t seen him in years. Probably why I didn’t recognise him.”

“What was he like?”

“He were sweet,” she smiles. She remembers his blue polo shirt and his big, goofy smile and him getting told off for trying to glue himself to his chair with PVA glue. He was a troublemaker in the most harmless of ways, always trying to make people laugh — even the teachers loved him.“Nice, kind, always wanted better for himself.”

“Better than what?” The doctor asks, titling her head slightly.

She remembers hearing snippets of gossip about Ryan’s dad throughout secondary school. Most of it racist bullshit she didn’t have the vocabulary to reprehend at the time. “Whatever his dad expected of him I guess. I dunno, we were young.”

“You were shocked to learn it was him after the event?”

Sergeant Sunder had slid a photograph of him over her hospital table, cutting through the toast crumbs and paper medicine cups. He was grinning with his mate on a basketball court. Yaz had been confused at first, wondered if Ryan had been hurt too. She’d asked if he was okay.

“Course,” she says, swallowing the sudden lump in her throat. “I never expected that from him.”

But then Sunder had stuck his finger on his face and said ‘it was him’. And suddenly it was a fact. Clear as day, she could see Ryan Sinclair’s face sat in the front seat, a sick grin on his face as he pulled his Glock 19 from his belt and all Yaz felt was a sick sense of betrayal. It lurched at her in waves, all there and then forgotten, only to drown her again whenever she recalled the memory.

“Guess his mum dying really fucked him up,” Yaz says, picking at the skin by her thumb. When she looks up the doctor is giving her a strange look like perhaps she hadn’t expected Yaz to be so blunt. She has to look away again before she starts to feel guilty, her harsh words suddenly not sitting right in her mouth. 

The doctor clears her throat and shifts on her chair. “Can you take me through what happened?”

Yaz starts with a sigh, not wanting to go through this all again, the repetition of it all draining her of any connection to the story at all. “It were routine traffic stop. The guy—”

“Ryan?”

“Right.” _Why didn’t I say Ryan?_ “Anyway, he pulled a gun on me as soon as I approached the vehicle. Let off two rounds but my vest caught it. I were out before I hit the ground.”

The blistering pain of the shots still rattle through her, vivid as anything. They’d knocked the wind right out of her and it felt like something was sucking it from her lungs, a vacuum against her lips until she was drained entirely of something vital.

“That’s not what you said in your first statement,” the doctor says gently as she pulls a piece of paper out of the file on the coffee table. Yaz knows what it says. She doesn’t let herself, hasn’t let herself, relieve what she said in that file.

“I were confused,” she says with a frown and her thumb has started to bleed again.

“You sound pretty certain here.” The doctor holds up the paper to read, scanning the awful words that reside there. “No stuttering, clear descriptions.”

“And what did I describe?” Yaz snaps. Her eyes whip up to find the doctor’s face pained like she watching someone she loves get tortured.

There’s a pause as she fiddles with the paper, deciding what to do next. “You said…” She uncrosses her legs but her knee bounces so she crosses them the other way. “Y’said it was a man with no face.”

Yaz feels a wave of nausea pass over her. She feels sweat start to prickle at the back of her neck and she swallows the salvia that’s gathered in her mouth.

“You said… ‘the bones of a person but with none of the features and none of the humanity’,” she stares at the words a little longer and then puts the paper down. “I’d like to talk about that memory.”

“Why?” She croaks and she’s positive she’s coming down with something the way her forehead sweats and her head aches. “So you can do some pseudoscientific dream analysis on it?” She doesn’t want to do this again, she’s so tired, her bones ache and she doesn’t want to fight her anymore.

“Sometimes our most unfettered thoughts hold vital information,” the doctor reasons, her face contorting apologetically. “I’d like to have a go?”

“Fine,” Yaz concedes despite every nerve in her body tell her not to. Despite the slowly building pressure behind her eyes and the desire to simply sink back into the sofa and sleep. She wipes her sweaty hands on her knees and lets out a shaky breath. “I approached the vehicle from behind. No weapons drawn, it were all very routine.”

It was a black Honda civic, the same car her dad drives. The brake lights were off and the air felt still as Yaz approached. Burbage Moors, by nature, are never still. It set Yaz on edge. The air tainted with the knowledge something awful was about to transpire.

“Why did you pull Ryan over?” She asks, hands folded over themselves as not to fidget.

_Why did I pull Ryan over?_

“I… he were speeding,” she says. Was he speeding? Can she even remember anything preceding getting out her own vehicle?

“Are you sure?” The doctor tilts her head gently as if to say _‘it’s okay if you’re wrong.’_

A few weeks prior Yaz would’ve noted what an odd thing that is to ask as if she had more knowledge of the event than Yaz did. But Yaz is starting to think maybe she does. Or, at least, maybe Yaz knows less about what happened that day than she thinks. Some niggling thing starts to itch behind her eye and she shakes her head.

“He must’ve have been. Why else would I stop him?” The logic is steady and she doubles down, feeling reassured with her reasoning.

The doctor must see her thoughts solidifying because she changes the subject, never giving Yaz a moment to dwell on anything reliable. “Think about Ryan, Yaz. What else do you remember about him?”

“He were funny, class clown, always falling over — he has dyspraxia,” she explains. She remembers messing about with him in the halls at Redlands outside the nurse’s office. He’d scraped his knee again and she just wanted to excuse to be inside during playtime. The nurse had scolded him for running too fast and didn’t seem to believe Yaz when she explained he’d tripped over his shoe. “People’d tease him ‘cause he couldn’t ride a bike.” She’d seen him try once when an older bully had bet he couldn’t — his feet slipped on the peddles and his face contorted into one of desperate concentration.

The doctor nods patiently, letting Yaz sit with her words. _He couldn’t ride a bike._

“Ryan can’t drive, can he?”

Fear bubbles up her throat when the doctor’s face softens. _What the fuck is happening to me?_ She can feel her breaths coming quicker and shallower. _Who was driving? Why don’t I know what happened?_

“Keep going, Yaz. You approached from behind…”

“I approached from behind,” she repeats, her voice sounds too loud in her ears, wavering with fear and she swallows to rid herself of it. She focuses on the memory, the scene playing out in her mind like a painting. “But I knew something were off. He were too… still. Didn’t put his hands on the wheel like I asked.”

She can see the dark silhouette of the figure taking up the front seat — too big to be a man, too resolute to be an animal. The moors looked empty all about her, endless planes of desolate grey and green. She was alone, spine-chillingly alone.

“I got to the window and he turned his head in were like… nothing. No face, no soul.”

It had looked matted and burnt. The pink flesh that covered something that might have once been a human skull looked charred and raw. The body was cloaked in black fabric that might not have been fabric at all. It was is ghostly and faint, still as the air on the moors. Yaz thought if she reached out to touch her hand would go right through it.

“I could _feel_ the void,” she gasps through her breathlessness. “It were like I was standing in front of a black hole. I’ve never been that scared before in my life.”

The Doctor suddenly shifts to sit on the coffee table in front of her. Their knees bash together gently and the obstruction of her view brings Yaz back to the room.

“Keep going, Yaz. You’re doing so well.” She looks utterly heartbroken as she leans in close and she wipes a few tears off Yaz’s cheeks she hadn’t even notice had fallen.

“I… I were frozen. Not just with fear. It were like… he was in my head, messing with my mind.” She hadn’t even screamed, hadn’t drawn a weapon or grabbed her radio. She couldn’t even gasp, the hold on her keeping her frozen. There was no mouth but if there had been Yaz was sure it’d be curled up into a sick cheshire smile. Something about the posture oozed a certain sense of smugness. “I felt sick to my stomach, all I could do was stare at his face and it were like… he was laughing at me.”

The void in her chest feels like lead, expanding behind her ribs to the point she thinks they might crack and splinter all over again. That big empty thing, far too solid to be described as sadness. A space that used to be filled with something _more_ , something bigger than her observable universe. “It was like he knew exactly who I was and what he wanted to take from me…”

Yaz’s fingers boldly pick up the key hanging around the doctor’s neck. _He took her from me._ It’s cold as ice under her fingers but she doesn’t flinch this time. Images from her dreams start to leak into the room: a murder of crows, a squid, an astronaut.“…What’s your name?” She whispers but she doesn’t know why.

“Doctor.” She says it firmly, almost angrily. Her mouth is contorted into a flat line and she looks pleadingly into Yaz’s eyes. She can see her, the woman from her dreams, standing in front of a blue telephone box with her hands on her hips, grey coat billowing in the wind with a smile on her face. “…Dr Smith.”

Yaz swims in confusion, a live ribbon wrapping itself around her eyes, blinding and suffocating her.

_Back in the box. There’s loads to see._

Pain shoots straight through her skull, right through her eyeball as if it was splitting the orbital bone and sending shards into gooey flesh. “ _Fuck,_ ” Yaz cries, snapping her eyes shut tight and coiling forward.

“What did he take from you, Yaz?” She asks urgently.

“Fuck, Doctor. It really hurts,” she gasps, shoving the heels of her hands into her eyes as the cracking pain doesn’t let up. 

The doctor’s hands find Yaz’s forearms, her cool fingers feeling familiar on her skin. “Tell me what he took, Yaz,” she murmurs. 

“Everything! He took everything!!” She cries and her hands are slippery on her face with the tears as she rocks herself through the pain. Every time she thinks about his soulless face and the void he left behind, a fresh wave of pain shoots through her skull. _“Fuck!!”_

“Look at me, Yaz. Just look,” she says, tugging Yaz’s hands away from her face. “You’re so nearly there, just try and remember.”

“Remember what?” This whole thing feels endless as Yaz spins in confusion, her only solace the hopefulness in the doctor’s face. It brims in her eyes and spills out around the edges.

“What do you dream about, Yaz?” The doctor guides her gently.

The pain pierces, a warning shot telling her not to continue lest he ruin her completely. She knows she must look white as a sheet as she feels a chill over her lip where she’s clammed up. _What do I dream about?_ She thinks, focussing on the question to distract from the sickness that wants to lurch from her guts. With her voice cracking, she starts:

“I dream… I dream of men made of steel. And a blue creature with teeth coving its face. I dream of scorpions or, or spiders and tiny things that eat energy and… I dreamt the world dies and we end up as awful creatures…”

“Yes. Good,” she nods frantically, her breathing becoming laboured and despite the pain, Yaz finally, _finally_ feels like she’s doing something right. “What else?”

“I dream about… a planet on fire. And women who look like rhinos and a man with no fingers… I dream about going back in time and being in space and…a blue box that’s bigger on the inside.”

She looks at the little blue figurine of the shelf behind the doctor’s head. _How does that make sense? I don’t understand._ Her eyes snap back to the woman in front of her, her familiar hazel eyes warming up something once cold and dead inside Yaz.

“And I dream about this woman…” She says. The images flash through her mind: legs braided together under sheets, a mole on the milky expanse of a back, a protruding carotid artery, pulsing at an alarming rate. Coattails in the hallway and blue nasal strips and that strange little device held by confident fingers.

The doctor’s eyebrows raise expectantly, glossy eyes widening with fearful anticipation. She seems to stop breathing completely.

“This woman with blonde hair and eyes that look like fire… who feels so real.” Yaz can’t stop herself when her hand reaches forward to touch the doctor’s cheek. She’s surprised to find them sticky with tears. “Whatever void were in that creature, I think he took her from me to fill it. ‘Cause it’s in me now… that emptiness. And I can’t _breathe_ around it.”

“You’re doing so well, Yaz,” she says, her tone pleading with her not to give up now. Not when she’s so close. She cups Yaz’s cheeks with both hands, holding her face up to look her in the eye.

Blinking away the tears that obscure her view, Yaz mumbles over her quivering lip, “she looks like you.”

The doctor’s face breaks into an unrestrained smile — joyous and lovely and relieved. Her mouth curls up at the edges and her eyes crease where they’ve reddened with tears. She swallows thickly, the swallow of a person who’s sinuses are clogged and throat still tight with emotion. “What’s her name?”

It can’t be real. She sees her up there, on that crane, her hair wet from the cold October rain.

_I know exactly who I am. Sorting out fair play throughout the universe…_

It was the day they met. The first time Yaz had laid eyes on her in that train in Sheffield and she knew almost right away that this was it for her. That she was with her, whatever happened.

_She can’t be real._ She shakes her head a little but the Doctor only nods, smiling softly as more tears fall.

It was her. All along it was her. The woman who fell to earth.

“…Doctor.”


	6. Cutting Me Open

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> hellooo so i deffo lied before, this isn't the final chapter lmao it would've just been too long. plus i kinda dont want it to end! sorry this one took so long! thank you all so much for your amazing comments/messages, it motivates me so much to get this sorry told. ily🧡

_“She can’t really think I did that? That I shot her? She has to know I would never do that,” Ryan said. His hands were braced on the TARDIS console, eyebrows drawn together in despair._

_“Y’asking her to go against her own reality. Everything she knows - gone. Her own memories, instincts, emotions - all untrustworthy. Blind faith in a stranger.” The Doctor felt small, her arms swaying by her sides, drowned in the heavy fabric of her coat. “She doesn’t know you, Ryan. …She doesn’t know me.”_

_The fact stuck in her throat. Yasmin Khan had no idea she existed. She’d claimed before there couldn’t be a universe with no Yaz and now here she was, existing in one that only included a version of her. The wrong version. And Yaz was out there, beyond the walls of the TARDIS, existing in a universe without the Doctor._

_“We’ve gotta do something, Doc. I saw her in the hospital. Not a blind bit of recognition. She thought I was the porter - had to give her my cheese and pickle sarnie just so I had a reason for being there.”_

_The thought of her alone in that hospital bed, more alone than she’d ever been, made the Doctor’s jaw tighten in anger._

_“Can’t we just tell her the truth? That that_ thing _did this to her?” Ryan said._

_Her companions looked at her expectantly. Always trusting her to save the day, save the girl. Why did they trust her so much? After everything she’d put them through?_

_“It’s not that simple.”_

_“Why?”_

_“Because, Ryan,” she snapped, far too harsh for everything he’d been through. “The Mnemosyne implanted a perception filter. If I push her too quickly the whole thing could tear her neural pathways. Permanent brain damage.”_

_Their faces fell, grave and worried as the reality sank in. Yaz was gone. Everything that made her_ her _taken away._

_“So what do we do?” Graham asked and the Doctor finally let herself catch his eye._

_“What humans should always do when they’ve got something eating at their brains. Go to therapy.”_

* * *

The lights above her shine down with intent, seeping in between her half-cracked eyelids. She mistakes them at first for twin suns, beating down mercilessly until the ground becomes dry and desolate. Something is obscuring her view, dark and wiggly and drenched in tears and the thrumming behind her eyes, the left far worse than the right, makes her feel slightly lopsided.

Voices are muffled by soft furnishing, a familiar cadence Yaz can recognise but not yet decode — the sound of a northern accent conversing with a south-east one.

“We’ll just have to wait and see. Nothing to be done now,” the northern one says, worry sewn between the familiar lilts and Yaz remembers she was dreaming about an alien planet. Her first alien plant and the Doctor’s coattails flapping in the billowing sands. She was in space and then on a ship and then on hard, sandy rock.

Moving her eyes to search for the source of the voices makes Yaz’s stomach flip like she’s been placed upon a rollercoaster. The whole room spins and tumbles and she grabs hold of whatever she’s laying on to steady herself — purple corduroy rough under her fingers.

“Yaz!” She hears and there’s an urgency to the word. “How’re you?”

The Doctor smiles when she sees her. She towers over her, blonde hair draping down around her face. That face. Her face. The image intermingles with one of her laid across Yaz’s chest, kissing her cheek as she reaches for a glass of water on the bedside table. Then it’s gone. 

“M’head hurts,” Yaz mumbles.

“It will,” the Doctor nods and Yaz doesn’t think she’s ever seen her break out into such a big smile before. But then, her memory is hardly a thing to be trusted. “Y’did so well. Look at me,” she says, holding Yaz’s chin between finger and thumb.

That funny little device shines orange in her eye — _what does she call that? —_ and the dark and wriggly thing shifts across her cornea. Something about it reminds Yaz of getting her NG tube removed; a slithering thing that didn’t belong being pulled from her nostril out from her gut. Only this thing looks much more alive. It’s black tentacles writhe and squirm, looking for something to latch onto, most of them choosing the tips of the Doctor’s fingers as she pinches it like a contact lens.

“That were in me?” Yaz squeaks, blinking away tears as the Doctor hold the thing up to the light to examine it. She doesn’t look particularly shocked or disgusted, just intrigued by the design.

“Perception filter. Nasty little thing, fused to your synapses through the optical nerve,” she explains, pulling out a little jar from her coat pocket to deposit it in. “Are you gonna be sick?”

The nausea is threatening, swirling in her gut and making her forehead prickle with sweat. Yaz doesn’t take kindly to threats and she shakes her head no. The Doctor doesn’t seem to believe her, moving the waste paper bin a little closer before turning to the man stood awkwardly by the books. There’s something off about him, or maybe just something obvious Yaz can’t see. It’s like looking at a parent or a friend in a dream when they’re wearing someone else’s face.

“Y’remember Graham?” The Doctor asks and as soon as the name reaches her ears it all comes flooding back.

“Alright, cockle,” he smiles a little nervously, raising a hand in a tentative wave. Graham O’Brien. _How could I forget Graham O’Brien?_ It’s like he’s a book character come to life before her, wearing his blue checked shirt and the greenish jacket he always wears.

“Yeah,” she says, recalling his Audrey Hepburn sunglasses, his sandwiches wrapped in clingfilm, his head popping out the shell of a dead Cyberman. “I remember.”

“You don’t know how good it feels to ‘ear you say that,” he exhales, hand coming up to feel the decline of his elevated heart rate.

She needs to sit up, her world view suddenly too big to be restrained to the sofa.

“Easy, Yaz,” the Doctor murmurs, hand coming out to support her back as she sits. 

“I’m…” Her feet look weird on the carpet like they’re incapable of bearing weight. Suddenly she has new memories of watching these feet cross alien terrain.

“It’s okay. You don’t have to say anything, I know you’re confused.” The Doctor shuffles closer on the coffee table, her hand coming to rest on Yaz’s knee. “You’ve had your whole reality flipped — two sets of memories, unsure of which is the truth. It’ll come back to you slowly.”

Her eyes are wide and earnest, the same sense of fear Yaz’s learnt to recognise as longing still present amongst the burning hazel. But now something new: excitement, relief, delight. A part of Yaz wants to delve into it, let herself feel that whirlwind of freedom and release but she’s stifled. Who is this woman? She wants to touch the hand, pale and boney, that rests on her knee but isn’t sure if she’s allowed to. Therapist? Lover? Alien? Friend? _You don’t know me. Not even a little bit._ The memory pops into her head like an alarm clock going off. The Doctor feels even more of an enigma now than she was before. She’s smiling widely. Hopefully. Like she’s waiting for Yaz to say something Yaz-like. Probably something clever or funny. Something to solidify that she’s back. That she’s her. That she’s—

Yaz throws up in the waste paper bin. Retches up the remains of the lie she’s been living the past six weeks. It burns her throat and as she heaves and she fears her body will never let her take another breath ever again. Would it even matter? Does oxygen exist in this reality?

“Nausea should pass in a few hours,” the Doctor assures her when all is expelled, her hand rubbing calming circles over her back. “Headache should be gone pretty quickly, too.”

Yaz takes the offered tissue with clammy, trembling hands, wiping her mouth as the Doctor tucks hair behind her ear. She must look offended at the act because she quickly retracts the hand and sits on it with an awkward smile.

“You just let me know when you’re hungry,” Graham says, pulling out a packet of mini cheddars from his jacket. The act causes a string of memories to form in her mind: the bleach-like smell of her hospital ward mixed with canteen food and the sound of Sunder’s police radio crackling. Then Graham stood at the foot of her bed.

“You were at the hospital,” she says, focusing in on the memory instead of the smell of vomit in her sinuses. He’d called her sweetheart and left a rather smushed looking sandwich on the over-bed table.

“Yeah, it was before we knew he’d… messed with your memories,” he says, a little sheepish and apologetic. 

The pronoun bounces around the room. The first mention of the _thing_ responsible for all of this. _Him_. The faceless face that haunted her dreams, now suddenly a fact. He exists. Out there somewhere in the universe, he’s laughing at Yaz, holding on to the memories he took, maybe even feeding off them. She shudders at the thought, a wave of panic washing through her.

“He were in my head… taking things, moving them…”

Yaz looks up at the bookcase. She’s breathless to find it filled to brim with memorabilia of their travels: books from authors they’ve met, places they’ve been. The photo of the Doctor in her tux shows Yaz’s very own shoulder, donned in a sparkly blazer she remembers now as itchy. She remembers Barton and the Kasaavin and O and the Master. She remembers being in that endless realm and the feeling of death lingering for weeks after. With a gasp, she remembers the Doctor dipping her in changing rooms as they tried on their fancy outfits, her arm strong and firm around Yaz’s waist. She remembers how much she wanted to kiss her then and how much she wants to now. But that glass box she’d found herself in remains, separating her from real life.

“The Mnemosyne seeks chaos across the universe. Not a very powerful creature but little shifts here and there, changing memories and relationships, is all it takes. Pushing the universe towards destruction,” the Doctor explains, hands shifting in the air like she was holding the concept up to be examined. 

“What, like Krasko?” Graham asks.

“Exactly. Nudging history just enough so that vital things never happen.”

She remembers Montgomery. The shitty, whites-only motel that smelt like mould. The heat inside that stuffy bus suffocating her just as the tension did. All of history on the edge of destruction all because of one woman. One choice. _I met Rosa Parks_ , some fleeting voice reminds her and she almost laughs.

“This whole thing…” She starts, looking around the room. The copy of _Nikola Tesla’s The New Wireless_ stands out of the shelf, the little figure of Wardenclyffe Tower on the spine bringing forth images of the Queen Skithra’s stolen ship. “It was to get me to remember?”

“Yep,” the Doctor beams, face full of pride that her plan has worked and she suddenly looks young. She never gave off an air of someone aged when she was playing the role of Dr Jane Smith but her solemnness covered this unrefined side Yaz now remembers as integral. 

“Who are you really?” Yaz whispers, fearing the room might disperse all around her at any second.

“I’m the Doctor,” she says proudly. “I’m a traveller, not of this planet. And I’m your friend, Yaz.”

She reaches out, the hand on her knee grabbing Yaz’s palm and drawing it into her chest. Yaz assumes it’s an act of trust at first, the warmth of her body letting her know she’s present. Her shirt is soft and Yaz watches with a frown as she feels the curves of her chest under the fabric.

But then something shifts. Yaz shuts her eyes. Closes them tight against reality as a new wave of sickness passes through her. _No, no, no._

“It’s ok, Yaz. You did it,” she says, smile still present in her voice but Yaz isn’t looking. Beneath her palm is the unmistakable rhythm of two hearts beating in sync. _Dum dum, dum dum. Dum dum, dum dum._ She feels her breath quicken, her own heart race. _It can’t be._

“No, no,” she croaks, shaking her head, trying to understand how such a thing could come to pass. How she could find it, deep within her bones, normal. “You shouldn’t be.”

“Be what?” The Doctor asks and when Yaz looks her face is shrouded in confusion, eyebrows drawn together in alarm as she watches a tear drop down Yaz’s cheek.

“Be real,” she says and she feels like she touching a ghost or has perhaps gone so deep into her mind that it’s become her reality. If reality was a lie before what is stopping it from being a lie now? “Be here.”

“Why don’t we, er, give her a moment, ay, Doc?” Graham suggests gently.

Protests form across her lips, taking shape and then dying as she struggles to find a way to convince Yaz she isn’t insane. “Right, yeah. Course,” she says, letting Yaz’s hand go with an awkward pat. She seems so different now, slightly petulant and stubborn, a little impatient. With her goal in sight, she’s suddenly unprofessional, surely wanting to tug Yaz back to herself by force instead of letting her lead the way.

Yaz feels the desire to run from anything that moves. All her fears, all the dreams of that ghastly face and being chased and caught and ruined, are real. The horrors from her nightmares, the visions that have been haunting her sleep for weeks truly are tangible. Not fears, not dreams: memories. Desolation exists, present and true and it dries under the heat of twin suns out in the depths of space.

“Wait,” she says as the Doctor turns to leave, grabbing the grey fabric of her coat sleeve.

_Get off me, Yaz!_

A flash of optimism flits behind the Doctor eyes but it’s quickly extinguished when she sees Yaz flinch at her own memory. Blue lights from that strange room flash and the torment splashed across the Doctor’s face appears in her mind’s eye. She feels the gut-wrenching pain of knowing she is walking toward death. _Are all these memories filled with sorrow?_ She wonders.

The inky blackness of her confusion is gradually solidifying. A sequence of events so nearly comprehensible, Yaz can taste it on her tongue. It’s a frightful image but an image no less, only a few pieces of the jigsaw missing in her mind. She looks up from the sleeve into desperate, open eyes, the final question primed on her tongue:

“What happened to Ryan?”


	7. Healing Me Fine

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> holy shit!! i did it! this is the final chapter and I'm really, really fucking proud!! this was such a learning experience for me and i'm so happy with all the feedback i've got over these week! to everyone who's commented: i really can't thank you enough, i feel like ive learnt so much working on this and it's literally all because your support has kept me motivated🧡
> 
> i hope this is a satisfying-enough ending, i'll be a bit sad to let them go!

They exchange a look for a moment, a silent conversation concluded with a quick nod from the Doctor. 

“He’s in the box, her err.. didn’t wanna spook you,” Graham says, nodding to the office window.

Yaz follows the gesture, her eyes coming to rest on a little blue police box outside, parked just across the street _. The TARDIS._ Her heart rate starts to pick up again, not so much from fear this time but anticipation. A steady rhythm that feels like a joyous laugh or the beat of skipping shoes on the floor. “It’s real,” she whispers and it feels like witnessing a prophecy.

She feels the Doctor’s hand in hers, looks down at their intertwined fingers, digit over digit like an optical illusion. “C’mon,” she says, smiling wide and tugging her towards the office door, “she’s missed you.”

Yaz can hardly feel her legs as she walks out of the building that once was her therapist’s office and now feels utterly insignificant. The cool air on her face is so _real_ she has to stop convincing herself it’s a forgery. The blue box stands ahead, the only barrier a steady stream of car. People going about their days in their normal worlds. All she has to do is cross the road but it feels impossible. Even when it's within her grasp, a niggling voice in her head anticipates a sudden impact from a speeding car, taking her out before she ever gets home. _Home._

But it doesn’t happen. She crosses the road without indecent, a joke about a chicken trying to form in the fog of her mind but disappearing as soon as the blue wood’s texture is suddenly visible. Then the TARDIS towering above her.

_I really need you right now._

“Hello,” she whispers, feeling the icy chill of the wood beneath her fingers. _I’m talking to a police box. Sort of._

“Ready?” The Doctor asks, holding up the key around her neck to open the door.

_My beautiful ghost monument._

Yaz nods. Ready might not be the right word but she’s too breathless to be able to dispute it.

The door swings open with a squeak and the Doctor disappears inside. Literally disappears, sinking into the depths of the TARDIS and around the console. All an outsider would see is an orange hue illuminating Yaz’s face as her feet stick to the ground. She can’t move. Can’t breathe. Can’t believe it.

“Whenever you’re ready, love, no rush at all,” Graham says from beside her. His hands are tucked into his jacket pockets and he makes a show of looking content to stand out here in the cold for as long as she needs, his eyes scanning the sky like it’s the most fascinating thing he’s ever seen.

She takes a step. Then two and then she’s stood inside the porch and the _magnitude_ of it makes her head spin. The amber lights are colossal, filling the space with a peaceful light. The central console sits with the same rock that juts out her sonic and it feels like something innate to Yaz, something inevitable. The ceiling stretches on and on, nothing but endless space Yaz’s brain fails to comprehend. Everything is still and quiet, the only noise that peaceful whirring Yaz had only heard in her dreams. Then there’s Ryan Sinclair, stood by the console with his arms hung limply by his sides.

Yaz is struck with panic at first. The sight of his sickening smile in the front seat of that car and his hand reaching down to the gun in his lap plagues her mind. She feels her heart tighten in her chest, her muscles stiffen. _It was a lie._

He smiles awkwardly, raising a hand as if to wave but then changing his mind at the last second. She doesn’t know when she took the few steps across the TARDIS to meet him but suddenly she’s there, feeling the fibres of his brown sweater under her fingers. His arm is toned but soft under her hand, warm and malleable and human. Living and breathing.

She remembers chatting to him in this very room about the future, remembers laughing with him in the kitchen and how angry he was at the thought of the Kasaavin taking her. She remembers how he saved them on that plane after the Master tried to kill them and how he hugged her tightly once the Doctor had brought her back from Queen Skithra’s stolen ship.

She looks back up into his face she and doesn’t see anger or smugness or malice. She sees the face of her brother, once forgotten, abruptly returned.

“You look like shit. And you’ve not even been on the run,” he smiles nervously before looking around at Graham who’s shaking his head, his grin quickly falling. “Sorry—”

Yaz hugs him tightly, feels the roughness of his sweater again her cheek and hears his single heartbeat in his chest. “I should’ve known you’d never…”

“Aye, none of that. You didn’t know,” he says, his voice rumbling through her face. “He made it so you didn’t know. C’mon.” He peels her back, looking into her eyes. His are deep and gentle and all Yaz finds there is endless forgiveness, empathy, understanding. She tries not to let it break her.

“What happens now?” She turns to the Doctor, frantic in her manner. “We have to tell everyone, clear his name—“

“You already did, Yaz. When you broke down the fragment, you stopped projecting the filter,” she says kindly. “Ryan’s safe to be out in Sheffield again, no longer a wanted criminal.”

How can that be? The image she had of Ryan in her mind couldn’t have come from her own psyche, could it? How could she have thought something so awful, so wrong and manufactured? How could she project it over the whole of Sheffield as if it were true?

“…It was me?” She asks slowly.

“No, Yaz. The Mnemosyne implanted that memory, using elements of your own life, your own world to make it believable. But it wasn’t you, I promise,” the Doctor explains, confidence taking over her face. It makes sense: the moors, the traffic stop, the gun in Ryan’s lap being police issue, the type of only gun Yaz has ever seen in real life. Elements of her world weaved into a distorted, sickening image.

“It was that little squid thing, Yaz. Whole of Sheffield was under its spell.” Graham looks guilty, shifting on the spot as he looks at his worn shoes. _It affected him, too_. “Soon as the Doc took me of Earth it was like my mind cleared. Imagining it’ll take you a little longer.” There’s a tension there, simmering between the three of them. _What happened here? What was said?_

“So, the last five-weeks…?” Ryan’s shuffling cuts through the tension that had started to settle.

“They’ll be remembered how they should be: Yaz got hurt on the job by an assailant. One that’s still out there.”

“Well, I ain’t having that. We gotta track him down, Doc,” Graham starts. “Stop him doing this to somebody else.”

Something’s not sitting right in the back of Yaz’s mind. The glass box she’s found herself in still resides, blocking her out from fulling realising the world around her. She feels outside of it, feels herself to be a thorn sticking out from the crowd, unwelcome in this universe.

“Why me?” She asks quietly. “Why didn’t he pick you, change your memories if he wanted to change the world?”

The Doctor’s face softens as she takes Yaz in, a little sigh escaping her lips. “Isn’t it obvious? Yasmin Khan, you change the universe,” she says with a proud, slightly nostalgic smile. “Already have, in fact. You both have.”

“But we’re just human?” Ryan says, his frown shaping his demeanour into something vulnerable.

“The most important person in all of creation is a temp in Chiswick. You humans are always underestimating how powerful you are.” There’s something about the way she looks at Yaz then, her face full of admiration and sorrow and, somewhere deep down, fear.

It bubbles up in her chest a little, the anticipation of defeat or loss. “Is he gonna be after me? Now I’ve… rejected the perception filter?”

“Maybe. Luckily the TARDIS will be able to track his footsteps via the energy signals left on this,” she says a little too calmly, pulling the jar out of her pocket. Its black tentacles press up against the glass, continually searching for a mind to infest. The Doctor must spot the rattled look on her face because she puts the jar down and steps a little closer. “We’ll find him, Yaz. But you need to rest first. Rediscover who you are.”

_Rediscover who you are, too_ , she thinks. Wouldn’t this whole thing be so much easier if her true reality was actually believable? Not this mishmash of new and old, human and alien, easy and impossible. Her bones ache, her neck twinges. She hadn’t even noticed how exhausted she was until the Doctor mentioned rest.

“Tell you what, cockle. You look like you need a nice cuppa and to put your feet up,” Graham suggests, nodding to the hallway she now remembers leads to the TARDIS kitchen. The small niceties make her chest hurt: Ryan giving her shoulder a squeeze as they walk, the Doctor boiling the kettle, Graham dramatically pulling out a chair at the table as if he were a chauffeur.

She just wishes she could shake this feeling of being out of place. She watches them talk, the doctor is sat on the floor like a kid, tinkering away in a panel as the rest of them sip their tea. What was it like here without her? Did they talk? Did they eat together and rest their eyes upon Yaz’s empty chair? Something about the air in the room makes Yaz think they spent their time alone in separate corners of the ship, grieving their individual losses alone.

“If you’ll excuse me, little boy’s room is calling,” Graham claims, much to Ryan’s chagrin as he finishes the last of his tea.

“Hold on Graham, I’ve just cut the power supply to the Architectural Reconfiguration System. If the bathroom isn’t next door, you’ll have to try the eleventh floor,” the Doctor smiles brightly from the floor, goggles pushed up to her head. 

“Eleventh?! Well, bleedin’ put it back!”

“Sorry.” The split wires in her hands spark and her face scrunches in the way it always does.

“I’ve had it with this, Doc. I really have.”

The back and forth warms something inside Yaz and as the happiness leaks through, so does anger. _He took them from me._ What have they been through while she’s been away? All this time spent being tortured by her mind while they were here, waiting for her, thinking she was gone forever. The rage bubbles under her chest. She feels weak. Stupid, even, for letting it go on for so long.

Ryan tips her mug to see how much tea she has left. It reminds her of him drinking the shitty coffee in Montgomery and complaining it tasted like wet socks.

“Do you want—“

“I remember making a promise to you in Montgomery,” she blurts. If she doesn’t say this now she thinks she might combust.

He looks up from the tea and something sinks in as he recalls their conversation behind the bins, waiting for that racist cop to leave. _‘Not this police_ ,’ she’d said and of course, she’d meant it but something feels different now, feels upside-down and backwards.

“Yaz, it’s not like that,” he says firmly. “He were in your head. He put that memory there, it weren’t you.”

Yaz sighs. “Y’think he knew? Knew people wouldn’t question it as hard, knew that they’d believe the lie easier if it were you. If it were me.”

She knows he picked her for a reason, too. Knew her history with Dr Jenson would make her unbelievable if things went south. That she’d be written off as crazy or hysterical if she started talking about the things she’d seen.

He lets out a little defeated laugh, shaking his head at the prospect. “Alien smart enough to use human ignorance against them.”

“I’m so sorry. This month must’ve been… terrifying.”

“Thank god me Nan taught me to be reasonable,” he says, looking up into her face. He looks apprehensive, angry but reserved. “The look Graham gave me,” he shakes his head, “like I’d tarnished her name… I could’ve smashed something.”

Yaz frowns, curling in on herself with anger on his behalf. She can’t even imagine how that must’ve felt, her own family believing even for a second she was a criminal, a killer. “You’re allowed to be angry. I know I am. If anything had happened to you—“

“You know the Doctor would never let that happen,” he says. 

The words weigh heavy in the air. _She let it happen to me_. The thought is fleeting and Yaz quashes it as soon as it emerges but Ryan gives her a look like he had the same thought. _Is he still thinking about leaving?_ She can’t imagine the TARDIS without him, not when she only just got him back. The Doctor is enthralled in her work, tongue pushed into her top lip and she looks small amongst the wires spilt out around her. _Could I survive with her forever?_

Ryan’s shrug brings her back to the room. “Mostly spent it on fakation on Orphan 24,” he smiles. “That’s why Graham’s got a suntan.”

Yaz laughs, her first laugh since coming back and she tries not to let it hurt too much. “Alright for some,” she says with a gentle smile.

They’ll talk about it one day. When it’s not so fresh and Yaz can feel her feet firm on the ground again.

“You should sleep,” he says, giving her a look as a yawn overtakes her face.

“Yeah,” she says, blinking sleepily. It must only be 6 pm on Earth but the exhaustion of the past month has settled heavily inside her. “Is my room where it should be?” She asks as she stands and the Doctor’s little face pops out from behind her goggles.

“Want me to come with you and check?” She smiles brightly, a smile Yaz remembers from her dreams. Dreams or memories? She catches glimpses of kissing her, touching her, fucking her, fleeting but frequent. Only one feels like it truly happened, their bodies flush, bumped up against the books in Dr Jane Smith’s office.

Yaz nods, watching at the Doctor scrambles to her feet and lead the way down the winding corridor back to the console room and through to the sleeping quarters. Her breath catches in her throat as her hand glides over the smooth metal rail next to the hexagonal steps.

_She’d been at a museum, or maybe an aquarium, somewhere with warm glowing lights. She was on a flight of steps, her hand gripping tight to a cold metal bar when she’d first felt the sensation of lips on hers. Her first real kiss. But she couldn’t say who they’d belonged to._

“Everything okay?” The Doctor asks, looking back at Yaz as they walk. She pushes the memory from her mind. _It can’t be real_. Taking a steady breath as she encourages her heart rate to slow down.

“Yep.” She nods as the Doctor pushes open a door.

“Sorry, I should’ve cleaned this up,” she says and when Yaz rounds the door frame she finds her bedroom, the same red bed in the middle, the same orange light on her bedside table. Her toes wriggle into the soft carpet and she’s hit suddenly with a sense of calm. There’re papers strewn all about the room, books on ancient species, sketches of perception filter designs. Her research. _She’s been working in here,_ Yaz thinks, and her heart flutters.

“You were in here a lot?” She asks, watching as the Doctor haphazardly clears the papers up. It smells like her in here and the bed is disturbed on the lefthand side. Yaz always sleeps on the right.

“Kept me focused,” she says, not making eye contact.

Yaz aches for her. In her bones, she aches, desirous of nothing but to reach out to her. _What are we?_ She sits on the cleared bed, feels it soft and inviting beneath her and when she looks up at the Doctor they both apologise at the same time.

“I’m sorry—“

“What are you sorry for?”

“I was… horrible to you,” Yaz starts, remember the things she’d said, the assumptions she’d made about the Doctor.

“You were right to be. I was lying to you, every day and then leaving you to think you were alone.” She looks tired. Really tired. “I’m sorry,” she says earnestly. 

What must it be like for her? To sit in a room Yaz didn’t know existed, searching for the alien that took her mind? She looks at the red bedsheets, sees again the mussed blonde hair against her pillow.

“No, you brought me back. It must’ve been… For me to not even recognise you.” How much did that effect her? Was she sad? Lonely? She looks up as the Doctor takes a tentative step towards her. “I think I felt that too. Even though I didn’t know you, I still felt like… something inside me did. Like my body knew who you were even if I didn’t.” It sounds stupid to say out loud and Yaz braces herself for possibility of the Doctor to turning to leave.

“I didn’t mean to confuse you more I just, I didn’t expect…” She looks faintly embarrassed, far too vulnerable for the Doctor she thinks she knows. Her shoulders slacken and inches closer, fiddling with a bit of scrap paper between her fingers. “When you kissed me… I thought you were back,” she mutters.

Yaz tries to hold back a gasp or maybe a sigh of relieve. _It’s real. It’s real. Please let it be real._

Yaz closes her eyes tight, sensing the Doctor approach more than witnessing it, right up until her thighs bump against Yaz’s knees. The warmth that radiates off her body scalds her.

“I still don’t know what’s real,” Yaz whispers, the fear of getting it wrong still pushing away the facts presented before her.

“You do, Yaz,” she says. She lets her fingers rest in Yaz’s hair and Yaz lets the feeling wash over her, goosebumps glittering down her spine as the Doctor finally touches her. She drops her head forward until her forehead presses between the Doctor’s ribs. Her shirt is just as soft as she remembers and she breathes her in: motor oil and tea and the laundry detergent she’d stolen from Ryan. _He took her from me._ The Doctor holds her head and Yaz lets her hands come to rest at her sides, keeping her close. “You can trust yourself,” she whispers.

All at once, Yaz flips her, pushing her small frame back against the sheets and letting her mouth find hers. It’s a blur, punctuated only with a gasp and then Yaz is on her, kissing her into the mattress and the Doctor is kissing her back. _She’s kissing me back_. It feels like divine absolution, complete acceptance, like being welcomed home into the arms of an unrelenting force of nature. Her tongue is warm and giving, her arms tight around Yaz’s waist. Yaz doesn’t even notice she’s crying until she pulls away and sees her tears smudged against the Doctor’s cheek.

“I missed you,” she mumbles and the words echo around the Doctor’s open mouth. “I didn’t even know you existed and I missed you.” She holds her face, taking in every inch, those hazel eyes burning with adoration.

“I missed you too,” the Doctor whispers with a smile, her hands running the length of Yaz’s back.

Yaz kisses her again, her hands dipping below the hem of her shirts to feel the aliveness of her skin.

“I need. I need to…” _Feel her. Touch her. Know her._

“I know,” she says, wriggling out of her suspenders. “It’s ok. Please do.”

Shedding their clothes feels like shedding the final barrier between Yaz and this universe. _It’s real._ Feels like the final step to freedom. _She’s real._ Her skin is pale and undamaged and it’s warm against Yaz’s. The Doctor touches her as if she knows her, her arms coming round to unclasp her bra, her tongue running along her clavicle. She knows exactly what works, knows exactly how to play Yaz’s body, a symphony of touches making her alive.

Yaz finds she knows exactly how to touch her back. Knows that the spot on her neck where her pulse beats at double speed is the most sensitive, knows that she likes Yaz’s hand in her hair, tugging her back down against the pillow. Yaz knows exactly what she feels like before she’s even inside her: warm and welcoming and soft.

The sound of the Doctor’s gasps are recognisable when Yaz’s fingers run through her wet heat, they bounce off her neck from where Yaz hovers above her, holding her close.

“You’re mine,” she says as she pushes inside, tasting the salty layer of sweat that covers the Doctor’s neck. “You’re mine. Tell me you’re mine,” she mumbles into the sensitive skin, focusing on the intentionally quick rhythm she’s set. She needs to feel it. Needs to feel the Doctor come around her fingers, evidence of her own existence. Evidence of history restored.

“I’m yours, Yaz,” she sighs, her breathing becoming more and more laboured the more Yaz fucks her. Her hips squirm beneath Yaz’s weight, her fingernails dig into the soft muscle of her back. “Pl… I’m yours,” she groans.

She comes quickly and quietly, her whole body stiffening and shuddering and Yaz remembers all the times she’s come before. All the times they’ve laughed here in this bed. All closeness. The intimacy. _How could I forget?_ She tightens around Yaz’s fingers and it feels like she’s begging her not to leave again.

Her fingers slip out gently when the Doctor stills and Yaz brings them to her lips. The taste, salty and piquant, sends a flurry of images cascading through her mind. Mostly of the Doctor with her back flush against the sheets, a few of Yaz on her knees, all of them happy, all of them sweet. The Doctor opens her mouth to take them too, her tongue warm and wet around her index. It’s like she’s experiencing the exact same thing, all the memories of their time together in sharp focus.

“I’m sorry,” she whispers again when Yaz removes the digits from her mouth.

“I know,” Yaz says, peppering kisses across her face, from the corner of her mouth and over her cheek. “Thank you.”

“Do you want me to…?” She asks slowly, giving Yaz’s bare hip a little squeeze.

Yaz shakes her head. Anything else going on with her brain chemistry right now might send her over the edge into an unencumbered decline. She’s content to just rest here and be with her, finally. “Just don’t let go,” she says, pushing her face impossibly closer to the Doctor’s neck, grateful for the warm weight of the duvet being tossed across their bodies.

“Yasmin Khan, I won’t ever let go of you again.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Time, mystical time  
> Cutting me open, then healing me fine  
> Were there clues I didn't see?  
> And isn't it just so pretty to think  
> All along there was some  
> Invisible string  
> Tying you to me?


End file.
